Puerto Montt

I tried to induce Rusty to head over to the Plaza de Armas but he had had enough of the rain and he put his head down and headed back home. I couldn’t blame him.

The latest rain shower blew through town and we huddled under an awning like the street dogs on the other sidewalk about four blocks from the comfort of GANNET2. 

And after it blew over no way was Rusty going to walk to the Plaza de Armas, the centrally located park three blocks away wherein lies Puerto Montt’s famous (they say) wooden cathedral. We were walking the scuzzier side of town.

Even on a Sunday lunchtime there was hardly any parking on downtown streets and in this case a 21 foot van made it no easier to get off the street but eventually we found a spot a little further from the center of town.  

Rusty is not a fan of sudden down pours and gusts of cold wind. He took refuge in a doorway and refused to budge. 

The facade of the sports bar across the street caught my eye. Men and women and soccer; not what you’d see advertised in a US sports bar.  

I don’t see puerto Montt as a tourist town. And in fact we aren’t here for tourism.  

We had a slight problem to deal with first: our house battery charger had stopped charging the battery bank we live on, the batteries that we use to cook and run the refrigerator and so forth. We noticed as we started exploring the fjords south of the lakes there was this problem so after just one night spent in fjord country looking forward to more spectacular scenery, we had to turn back to see about getting it fixed in the big southernmost city. 

We were on the road to Hornopirén from Frutillar when I noticed the engine wasn’t charging the house batteries. The alternators seemed to be fine and the starter battery turned over no problem and when we got a burst of sunlight the solar panels, scrubbed by all the rain, put out lots of electricity. But there was something wrong with the inverter/charger, the brains of our electrical system. 

It was a dismal rainy drive direct to Puerto Montt Saturday but on the way Layne contacted the importer of our electrical system, Go Power in Santiago and he can ship us parts if we need them. Good to know. 

 Thanks to an overlander contact in Puerto Montt we got in touch with an electrician (who happens to speak English) who will give us an appointment this week sometime, and on Monday said he was too busy so back to square one! Life on the road. 

(Overcast yes, but spectacular scenery to wake up to in the fjords, especially compared to Puerto Montt).

We spent the  night on the street with a vault toilet to empty our porta potty in and a dumpster to take out trash… 

It wasn’t scenic like the fjords we’d wanted to explore, but it had what we needed. We turned off the fridge at night to save amps and watched the rain showers roll through. This is the less glamorous side of travel. 

Puerto Montt is a city of 250,000 founded in 1853 and named in honor of Manuel Montt President of Chile who encouraged Germans to migrate to southern Chile after the revolutions and protests of 1848 across Europe. 

The city’s known for salmon production and is viewed as a high employment hub in Chile attracting a lot of incomers. It’s not much for tourists and the streets are lined with small suburban homes and huge blocks of apartments. It’s not a place to visit for fun but it is useful with lots of light industry and the kinds of repair shops we overlanders  love. 

Sunday morning we went shopping at what they call the Mall Chino, an emporium of Chinese products, all the stuff you didn’t know you wanted in some kind of overstuffed dollar store. 

Our toilet paper basket committed suicide when I missed spotting a rope and we flew over the speed bump at speed. Oops. Our folding stools have gotten tired and we would like to replace them but so far no luck. It’s odd how some things so common at home are unobtanium here. 

Christmas shopping is in full swing here and this store made it extra special by playing competing carols at the same time. I had to go and walk Rusty. 

We drive to the waterfront to have fish for lunch in a rather attractive restaurant, at least on the inside. 

Grilled cod and mashed potatoes to keep the cold out. 

Even the waterfront has a bit of a dilapidated air to it, moldy with rain and damp. 

It doesn’t entice me to go shopping. 

And this below is kilometer zero of the Carretera Austral - the Southern Highway -  that goes to the tip of mainland Chile at Villa O’Higgins 800 miles away. It was built during the dictatorship to connect the isolated communities in Chilean Patagonia to the rest of the country. It’s a combination of short ferry hops, paved highway and the bottom third is gravel just for added fun. We will be bypassing most of it by taking our four day ferry ride at the end of the month. 

And while we wait to get our electrical system re-organized we’ve taken an apartment for a few days, heat WiFi and washer/dryer for $46 a night. 

GANNET2 is very comfortable but endless rain and no exploration does get tedious. 

And most important, Rusty likes it. 

Blue dot is Puerto Montt. Red dot is the end of the Carretera Austral. Our goal is the very bottom of the map, where the black border line makes a right angle, 1700 miles away is Ushuaia in Argentina.