Puerto Varas

Hola! Even though I´m disappointed the zpack didn´t work as well as I´d hoped, it´s hard to feel too sick and miserable when the scenery around me is so amazing! The drive from Bariloche to Puerto Varas, 6 hours, was so beautiful. We basically drove through national forests, so everything was lush green, there were tons of vacas (cows) and random waterfalls everywhere! The weather once we made it to Puerto Varas was miserable and rainy yesterday, but today most of the morning and early afternoon were sunny and not too cold. Puerto Varas is a port city, but it´s on a huge lake. There is also a volcanoe off in the distance that we can see from our hotel called Orsono. Our hotel is a little outside of our hostel budget, but we made up for it by grocery shopping! We were all so bummed and tired from the weather and our time in Bariloche that we were SO EXCITED to find lots of American comfort food in the supermarket: Edy´s cookies n cream ice cream, crunchy peanut butter, frosted flakes, and preztel sticks! We´ve successfully eaten every meal here for two days for ten US dollars, go us!!
We have been very lazy since we have been here. There are 5 of us here, and two of us are sick, so we´ve taken advantage of nice comfy beds and hot showers, and watched TNT and WB most of the day. Chile is a lot more Americanized than Argentina. It was interesting coming across the border though. We couldn´t bring anything we´d bought in Argentina and no food. We stopped once to leave Argentina and then another time to enter Chile. I guess we were in no mans land between those to stops-it seemed kind of pointless. But, Argentines and Chileans don´t like each other. According to Argentines, Chileans cause all their problems! And another tricky thing about Chile is their peso. 1,000 pesos equals 5 Argentine pesos, and 1.80 USD. It´s so weird to pay 2,000 pesos for papas fritas! And their coins say 500 pesos and 200 pesos. It´s been really confusing for us, another reason to stay inside! haha. We leave tomorrow at 200PM and will have a night and most of the day Saturday in Bariloche to ride another cable car for good pictures and eat lots of chocolate and try their famous waffles! =) Hasta Luego!