We couldn't leave Valdivia without visiting the fish and vegetable market. The story goes that 20 years ago a sea lion stopped by the pier and was fed by the fishermen. Needless to say he never left and now there are many sea lions that appear at the market, along with lots of pelicans and gulls. They have become a bit of a nuisance too, so there is a large fence protecting the market. We got to see a couple, then we were back on the road.

A few hours later we were in Puerto Montt, a large port town, which is the fastest growing city in the continent due to the salmon farming industry there. Its also where you can grab a ferry down to Puerto Natales, taking three nights to explore the Chilean fjords. We priced this trip - over a million pesos (about €1,500) - no thanks!

Chile is one of those countries where the exchange rate is just a bit baffling. It's not like Colombia, where it's perfectly normal to take out a million pesos at an ATM, but it's not far off it.

We did stop in Puerto Montt however to explore the local market which was full of wooden and knitted handicrafts. Sean and Callanan decided it was very important to buy knitted finger puppets. We also stopped for lunch, at Angelmo, the biggest fish market in the country.

While everything maybe fresh at the Angelmo market, the Chilean favoured way of cooking - frying - doesn't make it the healthiest. Many people ordered the local dish of fried conger eel, which was greasy to say the least. Sean tried to be smart and ordered grilled conger eel, but it still came served covered in oil. It was a lot like cod, soft, chunky and white.

I had ceviche for lunch, which has long been on my 'to do' list. Ceviche is raw seafood marinated in lime, chilli and onions, served cold. It is served all over the Andean countries of South America but I had yet to try it. It's interesting but too sharp and bitter. At least it's been tried though!

We then travelled north, just half an hour, to our final destination of the day and our Pachamama By Bus trip - Puerto Vares. The trip stops here instead of Puerto Montt because the town is much smaller and nicer, which we decided was true. It sits right on Lago Llanquihue, from which you get stunning views of the snow peaked Volcan Osorno. And that's exactly what we looked at from a rooftop terrace with beers and coffee in hands.

Seven of us went out for pizza that night. The pizza place had run out of beer, but the waitress did let us sneak in beers as long as we drunk them out of mugs. The rest of the Pachamama By Bus crew left the following morning, Tuesday, while we slept on. They were heading north, back to Santiago, while we wanted to push south, deeper into Patagonia. We got to explore the sleepy town a bit more because of it too. I forget the exact history but the town in German based and you can see this in the architecture, the food and the beer. The local beer is called Kuntsmann - make whatever jokes you feel you need to out of that!

We have had a long streak of luck with bus tickets. Only once, in my memory, have we not gotten the bus we wanted to. But we can push our luck to the limit on occasion. We had dropped off some laundry around the corner from the hostel on Monday and were on our way to collect it on Tuesday morning. We were chatting and no one was really leading the group, so it wasn't a surprise when we realised we had taken a wrong turn and were now in front of the bus ticket office. So we popped in to buy our ticket for Wednesday, going to Bariloche, Argentina. Even though we stumbled a bit with our Spanish, we managed to get the last three seats on the only bus of the day. About thirty seconds after we sat down a girl came in looking for tickets on the same bus. If we'd have gone for the laundry first, we'd not have gotten our tickets!