Sunday, February 16

Today we woke up around 10 and packed up everything that we had unpacked after staying a week in Chiloe. Tia Julia cooked us giant sopaipillas for breakfast, which we ate with manjar. Then we said a huge thank you and goodbye to everyone and got on the road to Ancud, another city on the island of Chiloe. On the way there, we stopped at the other festival custombrista where we saw these giant cloves of garlic that Chiloe is famous for and also some oxen being driven without reigns or anything just with a stick that their owner was holding.

We ate a salmon lunch in a nice restaurant there, and then walked down the boardwalk along the ocean for a while.

Then we went to Fort San Antonio, another Spanish fort taken over by Chile. After that, we drove back to the ferry and crossed over onto mainland Chile.

We drove through Puerto Montt and then a long way to Puerto Varas. First we went to the Lider in town to buy chocolate and marshmallows because I wanted to make s’mores that night. Then we spent about 2 hours driving down the highway at night through the woods looking for a camp ground. We finally arrived at Camping Las Montanas at like 10 at night only to find that there were no more available spaces. They took pity on us and gave us the refugio building, which is like an empty log cabin with a chimney inside. I thought it was absolutely great until I looked up into the rafters and saw all the giant bugs. We decided to deal with the bugs, and while I inflated the mattresses, Nancy prepared dinner. After eating a light dinner, we broke out the graham crackers that my mom had sent me from the US (graham crackers don’t exist here) and I made my family their first s’mores ever. They loved them and wanted more and more. I was proud of introducing them to such a typical American tradition.

After we finished eating, we talked for a little while, and then went to sleep relatively early. I slept with the blanket over my head as protection against the bugs, but I actually slept really well and woke up without any new bug bites thank the lord.