I slept in until about 7:30am, rang my daughter Tracey, and made a list of the things I need to buy in Puerto Montt. I have sore legs and find it a bit difficult to sit down and stand, so will need to do a bit more walking today.
At breakfast my last remaining pair of glasses snapped in half so the first item on the list is to buy glasses.
I caught a taxi into the city and went to an enormous mall complex, 5 floors, which was a bit overwhelming as it has been nearly 5 months since I was last in anything like this. The Christmas decorations are in all the shops. I managed to buy two pairs of reading glasses at the second optometrist shop. The first wasn’t able to understand my mime of what I wanted (not sure I would have either). I tried to mime a long arm with a book, and then mimed glasses on my head.
Then next on the list, to get some face cream from a pharmacy that is actually what I was expecting and usable. The last one must have been night cream, as it was a really thick paste. Getting face cream was made more difficult as it was on a shelf behind the counter and the shop attendant would not let me go behind the counter. We had to play guess which one I am pointing to, it took a while.
I then tried to buy some long pants but either shops here don’t have changing rooms, or my miming skills were not able to covey what I wanted.
The hub for thousands of cruise liners (Photo credit: Jo’s Facebook page)
After that I went for a walk along the water front and exchanged some Chile pesos into American dollars at a money exchange, there were a number of these on the shore front due to the number of cruise ships that come here. I am trying to build up the amount of USD I have. We are requested to give the staff a gratuity at the end of our trip and Argentina or Chilean money is not much use to them as they are also leaving the country as soon as the trip is over. I then went back to the mall and had lunch, and went to the supermarket and then caught a taxi back to the hotel.
Waterfront Puerto Montt
A knitted tree, and sleeping dog
A pretty park bench
I spent a couple of hours trying to catch up on the blog as Kelly (blog editor) is now only one day behind the last update I have given her, and I am nearly two weeks behind again. I find it hard to do updates in the tent but I do make notes each day, otherwise the days blur together and it is hard to work out what happened when, or even what happened on a day at all (as I found when there was a four day period that I did not even make notes).
Brett and I went to the pizza place for tea but it was crammed full of TDA riders and there were no tables. Rather than go into the city we walked across the road to a seaside stall that was making empanadas and salmon ceviche (raw fish). We got a selection of the empanadas which were ok, and the salmon cervice which was fantastic.
Ship in harbour at Puerto Montt (Photo credit: Brett)
Photo credit: Brett
Then it was the usual packing of bags etc, my laundry was returned with 3 socks that were not mine, and missing a pair of socks that were. Now down to 2 pairs of riding socks.
The next 6 days look like they are going to be challenging with lots of dirt, climbing and some bush camping. However, I would rather be doing this than going on a cruise like Nellie and Dick.
Nellie and Dick
