The Hot Cherry

(The Hot Cherry is where the guide says the salmon hatch: in the fish hot cherry.)

Plot and Duck have just drunk a bottle of Concha y Toro Chilean chardonnay, and they don't usually like chardonnay but this one was really good. Carmen, the wife of the husband-and-wife couple who run Hotel Kalfu in Puerto Varas prepared a special cena tonight, consisting of mariscos -- shellfish -- mussels in dill and cream, crab and local clams in a parmesan crust, shrimp in butter and garlic, and something else Plot is forgetting right now because of the chardonnay.

This came after a day of travel overkill, which is to say too much time on a bus and too much time on a catamaran crossing a lake to see some astoundingly beautiful scenery, but -- going there would have been great. Going there and then turning around a few hours later and coming back was a bit much.



Lago Todos los Santos is a gorgeous lake all right -- the Orsono volcano above, a river crashing over rocks, a glacial valley, and the water green and deep. The feeling is like Yosemite, without Half Dome but with a few volcanoes -- the great meadow is cattails and pampas grass and the animals are not deer but llamas. And there is no commercial sense whatsoever. The Argentine border is only a few miles away and you'd think there would be a military since the two countries really don't like each other very much, but there is none. And barely any people visit the national park.

So maybe the little village of Peulla is no Yosemite Valley, but you know -- there is something solid to say about a place 75% as beautiful with NO people, no graffiti, no coke cans, no beat boxes and tvs and campers and vans, no paper plate and plastic graffiti, no beer bottle garbage, no signs at all of any human presence. Plot and Duck lay in a spot that in America would have had "Jose loves Maria" spray painted all over the trees, and here in Chile there was...nothing. Just trees and rocks and water.



Sometimes Plot thinks about American pop culture and values and it just makes him sad.

They hiked to an absolutely beautiful spot by a waterfall and sat down on the rocks and soaked in the sunlight. And then they went back and got back on the boat and got off the boat and got onto the bus and got off the bus and ended up at the plaza in Puerto Varas and when they walked back to Casa Kalfu they set in motion the bottle of chardonnay and platter of delicious mariscos.

The Great Plotnik and The Great Ducknik are feeling contented tonight. Tomorrow you'll hear from the two World Travelers from Punta Arenas, Chile, at the bottom of South America. The weather here has been so good they know they will have to pay for it somewhere. It might be there.