Public Transportation in Chile is a Rockstar
When we made our way from Santiago to Puerto Montt, we boarded a huge bus with Pullman Bus. These buses are amazing - double-deckers with seats that lean back so far they make beds.
The 12-hour bus ride was accompanied by a snack at night and then a snack in the morning. They also played two movies. One was this really whacked-out Argentinean movie that was basically like the National Lampoon's Family Vacation movies, only way more ridiculous.
The second movie they played was an American movie dubbed in Spanish, but equally as ridiculous. I think it was called "Litte Men" about this tiny thief that stole a diamond which somehow ended up at some middle-class family home and the thief acted like an abandoned baby at the family's doorstep in order to get the diamond back. Weird.
They told us that the bus ride would be 12 hours. The bus pulled into the parking spot in Puerto Montt exactly 11 hours and 59 minutes later. I don't know what they did in order to get such perfect timing, but I guess that's part of their job.
These past few days we've been able to just hop on a bus and go to another city for about $1. Yesterday we went to a city called Puerto Veras that has two huge snow-capped volcanoes on a lake. We kayaked on the lake. We even kayaked into a little cave. It was awesome.
Yesterday we went to a town called Calbuco. There's not much there. It seems to be a small fisherman's community.
We were there during low-tide so we went around the shoreline turning over rocks and little crabs would scurry everywhere. It was as if we were at Buck Creek in Kentucky turning over rocks looking for crayfish.
On the bus ride back to Puerto Montt we passed barns, tractors, and horses. It really felt like we were driving through parts of Kentucky. A little taste of home in Chile. Mmmm... a taste of chili... Gimme some crackers.