Puerto Montt, Chile

We woke up early this morning and had breakfast in the Lido Café. It was more crowded than usual as the majority of passenger’s were booked on one of several shore excursions. Since we visited this port of call only two years ago and had taken a shore excursion, we decided to walk around on our own this time around.. After breakfast, we went over the fitness center, which was not very crowded and we did our regular workout with Anne Marie exercising on the treadmill and Keith working out on the Elliptical Machine.

Afterwards, at around 9:00 AM we took a tender over to the port. On the tender we saw from a distance a couple that we had just recently met in early September during our cruise on the Seabourn Pride Cruise Ship from Copenhagen, Denmark to London, England. We chatted with them for a few minutes. We learned that they along with some of our fellow passenger’s were going on a three night overland package to Chile’s Patagonia region. We look forward to hearing about their adventures when they return back to the ship in a few days.

The skies were overcast so we wore our world cruise blue jackets and long pants. After arriving ashore, we took a complimentary shuttle over to the center of town.

Puerto Montt was founded in 1853 and is located at the head of the Pacific inlet known as Reloncavi Sound. Although representing a minority of the citizens of this town, there are a fair number of German descendents who live here. In 1852, German colonists began settling in this area as it provided them with solid employment opportunities.

We walked around the downtown area for a while and also went into a fairly large department store and a beautiful food store. Many times when we are in port we like to walk through a local supermarket just to get a feel for the kind of items that they carry that might be unique to the area of the world that we are visiting. Naturally, this supermarket carried a nice variety of Chilean Wines, along with an excellent produce area and bakery. The prices were very reasonable.

Rather than take the shuttle, we decide to walk back to the ship. As we arrived back at the dock, we remembered from our last visit that located on the other side of the pier are a variety of outdoor craft shops so we strolled the main street looking at this market. Before boarding the tender we were able to speak with our daughter, Jennifer, on the cell phone. It was great to hear Jennifer’s voice and to catch up with her. We then boarded the tender and arrived back to the ship and went to lunch in the main dining room. Very few passengers were back so we had a very nice and quiet lunch. We each had a Cobb Salad.

Afterwards, we decided that with so many of our fellow passenger’s still ashore that it would be a perfect time to utilize the laundry machines. We know from our past cruises that with some sea days coming up that the laundry room will be quite busy over the coming days. As it turned out when we were about finished with the laundry a fairly large group of passenger’s returned back to the ship and before we knew it all of the machines were in use.

Before dinner, we met a couple from Cruise Critic in the Crystal Cove. We really enjoyed meeting them and talking with them and look forward to our Cruise Critic get together at Silk Road next week.

We had another enjoyable dinner with our fellow tablemates in the main dining room. Tomorrow evening there will be four of us dining together as one of the couples has reservations in one of the specialty restaurants.

We left Puerto Montt about one hour after the planned departure time. This is a first for us but evidently they had difficulty getting the anchor pulled in. They tried several times and finally were able to get the anchor up and securely put away. There will be no impact to our scheduled arrival time at our next port of call.

Following dinner, we went to a show starting Vocalist, Tracey Shield. She presented “An Evening with Celine Dion”. And, sure enough what do you think she sand for the closing song of the evening? Yes, you guessed it “My heart will go on”.

The next two days we will be at sea and look forward to the various lectures, shows and other activities. On Thursday, we will arrive in Punta Arenas, Chile. The weather has turned cooler and we know that the weather will continue to become cooler as we make our way further south.

If you would like to leave comments for us on the blog, we look forward to seeing them.

Keith & Anne Marie