Dec. 18th - Goodbye Pucon, Hello Family

Written from Dave´s point of view:

"What time is it, and why is my alarm going off? Oh right, I agreed to go fishing with Rich this morning. Is is still raining? Of course it is. "

I get extra bundled and go join Rich in the front room of Ecole! to wait for our river guide. Rich had brought his fly-fishing gear all of the way from Boston to fish the waters of South America, and therefore I felt somewhat obligated to go with him to see what the waters of Chile had in store. Our guide Pedro picked us up in a newer Toyota Tacoma towing a (very much) older wooden dory with no motor. Off we go in search of adventure!

The first river we stopped at was raging, so our guide took us to his plan B, which was just as beautiful but much calmer. We load up in the tiny dory, with Rich fishing off the right with a fly rod, and me perched beside him with a spinning road. The boat was small enough that we had to take turns, with Rich hitting the slow spots on the banks with his fly road, and me hitting the the faster sections by trolling my line down river ahead of us and then reeling it back in. We each catch a couple of little 1/3 pound trout (Rich calls them saltine fish, as in "well, you could always throw them on a saltine." Once, I couldn't even tell I has something on my line until I had reeled most of my line in.

All of a sudden, though, everything changed. Something much bigger had hit my line, and was giving me quite a struggle. What I´m sure was only 1 minute of fighting seemed like 5 minutes, with my rod bent over almost sideways for much of it. Finally, I got him beside the boat and saw how big he actually was. Rich and the guide both started hoopin´and hollering, and Rich actually said it was the biggest trout he's seen (of course he mostly fishes saltwater, but still). It was a brown trout, and the guide estimated it at 3 to 3 1/2 lbs. Certainly the biggest fish I´ve ever caught, and quite a inducement for me to continue the sport.




After that, everything pretty much had to be downhill, despite the fact I caught one more decent 1 lb. rainbow trout. Rich ended up catching about 7-8 trout with his fly rod, but none of them more than a pound. Regardless, he too had a blast, and we both continually marveled at the beautiful surroundings as we floated down the river. All good things must come to an end, though, so after 3 or so miles in 3 hours, we pulled out just before the rapids started and headed back to town to pack up.

Back in Pucon, Betsy was raring to get on the road to Puerto Montt, where her son, Bryce, was waiting for her and Rich after being on a two-week cruise around the bottom of South America with his grandparents. Betsy and Rich had been doing okay without their son on their trip with us, but in the previous couple of days it was becoming quite obvious that they were missing him terribly. Unfortunately, Carrie had just discovered that she had left her ATM card in the ATM machine the day before, and when we explained our predicament to the security guard, he told us that we had to wait 2 more hours for the end of the siesta before the could check to see if they had the card. Well, 2 hours here can easily often be 3-4 hours, and since we had no guarantee that they actually had it (and a anxious mother dying to see her baby), we decided to just call and cancel the card and deal with it later so that we could get on the road to Puerto Montt.

The drive turned out to be a quick 3 1/2 hours; we had heard that it might take as long as 6 hours, so that was a relief. We had planned to meet Carrie and Betsy´s parents and Bryce at a hotel, so we drove straight there. The streets of Puerto Montt were busy, dirty, and cowded with pedestrians. We found the hotel, and Betsy jumped out of the car (she couldn´t wait one more minute to see Bryce) while we went in search of parking. Luckily we went around the block and got (DeJager) lucky with parking right in front of the hotel. We arrived as Betsy walked out the door with Byrce and Carrie´s dad, big smiles all around. Bryce slammed himself into Rich wrapping around him tightly, then there were big hugs for Uncle Davey and Aunt Carrie, too. Happy reunion for all.

We all got settled into our rooms at the Hotel O´Grimm. The name pretty much says it all, but we only had to be there for one night. After Carrie´s mom woke up from a nap, we all set out to find a pre-dinner snack. It was only 6:30pm after all, and no one was serving dinner even though we were all hungry. It was quite a different thing now as our group had expanded from 2 couples, to 6 adults and a child. We couldn´t exactly blend into the crowd very well and got a lot of stares on the streets. We found a nearby bar called "Sherlock" and had a couple drinks and french fries. Carrie and Dave went for a quick walk after dinner to explore Puerto Montt. We really all that impressed. There wasn´t much that was cute about the town. It just seemed like a busy, dirty working town.

Later we all went out in serach of a nice dinner. Unfortunately, the two "good"restaurants listed in Lonley Planet and Frommers had disappeared (construction sites where they were supposed to be), so we settled for another bar that was serving food. It was SUPER smokey - I can´t remember the last time I actually ate a meal in a smoke filled room, and I certainly don´t miss it. Finally we went back to the hotel and planned to leave for Chiloe early the next morning.