Saturday Jan 14, 2023
Hey guys! OK… now we’re saying what statue??? We think we finally broke the curse! We made it thru Friday the 13th and Sat the 14th without a hitch. And we had an amazing day today. We had to get up early for our excursion and looking out from the balcony it seemed like it might be a rainy and overcast day. But it turned out to be sunny and warm! Our luck has changed!
We had to tender in to this port (love the name Chacabuco!). We did an all day excursion called Casa Penaflor but to be honest, I booked this tour so long ago I forgot what it was. We had the best tour guide named Tina who had moved from Berlin, Germany to Patagonia mostly for the beautiful scenery of the area. It really was beautiful. It reminded me of the Norwegian Fjords but may have been even more breathtaking.
We started out with about an hours drive to get from the port to the heart of Patagonia. We stopped several times along the way to lookout points to see the scenery. We then drove to the touring company owner’s private home in the mountains to relax and have some coffee cake and tea/coffee. It was so nice of them to host us and make us feel so welcomed. And the homemade coffee cake was amazing! Their house is called Casa Penaflor, which means house of the mountain flowers.
We then left there and had time to browse some stores thru the town square of Coyhaique. They had lots of people there selling things and a man and woman playing music. It was in a nice park setting and both Kathy and I bought a few things.
We left there and went to see this really cool waterfall that has some tie into the Virgin Mary but we never did figure out the connection. But they had a small shrine set up to honor Her. And places where people could light candles to pray for loved ones and many people had left flowers and other tokens.
We then drove down by the Simpson River for some nice photo ops with the river and mountains. After that we went to this bridge that sort of looks like the Golden Gate Bridge but on a much smaller scale. It’s a very important bridge for the community since it connected Puerto Chacabuco with Puerto Aysen.
After getting back on the ship we showered, changed and went to dinner. After dinner we went to the show to see the comedian. He was actually from North Carolina and was really funny. He even told some Harris Teeter jokes! Tomorrow is a sea day but we’ll be cruising along the Chilean Fjords so we’re hoping the scenery will be pretty awesome! Hope everyone has a great weekend!
PS: I’ll post the pictures later!
The Wandering Italian 