Still good in Puerto Varas

Sculpture, Puerto Varas

After our six weeks in Pucon, we reluctantly said goodbye to Emma and Olivia, and got the bus a few hours further south to the heavily German influenced, Puerto Varas. We hadn't been here on our last trip, so it was nice to arrive at a new destination, even if the plan was simply more of the same.

Our hostel is a nice homely place, and we have enjoyed chatting with lots of other people here, including a few where we have exchanged details and hope to keep in touch with.

The hostel includes breakfast in the price. Unfortunately breakfast means lots of homemade bread and cakes, which we aren't allowed to have. They do offer porridge as an extra, which when we explained what we were doing, and why we didn't want to eat their cake, they agreed to let us have instead of the normal meal.

Lake Llanquihue and the Osorno Volcano, Puerto Varas

The only problem is, they will keep cooking these loaves and cakes, and they smell delicious. We have promised ourselves a treat of the normal breakfast on our last day, to try to keep us from giving in to temptation in the meantime.

Our gym here is actually in the nearby hotel, which is very convenient, and although it is only small, most of the time it is only us there, which is great. They also have a lap pool, and I finally decided to brave the idea of a swimming costume and get in. I'm not a strong swimmer, but am actually quite enjoying my swim after the machines in the gym.


Nic occasionally joins me, but as he has entered the London Parks half marathon in October, he is more focussed on building up to running that. He is actually aiming even further, as he is hoping to complete a full marathon before he reaches the age of fifty. That means he has until December 2018. He is running the half marathon for a charity called the Mental Health Foundation, so if you'd like to encourage him, and support a worthy cause, you can do so at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Nic-Green

Puerto Varas

This is a good thing for me, as Nic not only has considerably less weight to lose than I do, he is also losing it faster than me. This seems par for the course for men to lose weight quicker, but it is most annoying. I have considered sabotaging his diet by adding sugar to his food, but decided that would be too mean, so restrict myself to just calling him a git occasionally instead!

But with him needing to train for a half, and then full marathon, he will still have to stick to healthy eating and exercise after he reaches his target weight, which means that I won't still be ploughing on after he is done. That will help me to be less disheartened by how long it takes.

Sculpture, Puerto Varas

So we are sticking to our healthy food and to our routine at the gym. And the weight is still gradually coming off. We even bought ourselves a cheap stick blender, so that we can make our healthy soups.

We have actually had a couple of meals out here too, as we have found that if we stick to a fatless fillet steak, salad with no naughty dressings, and no alcohol, we can keep within the rules and not affect the diet.

We hit our second milestone target, and again treated ourselves to a less restrained meal, but again, have gone straight back to being good again. La Marca is our restaurant of choice here.

We have taken a few strolls around town, and again stopped in a few cafes, still avoiding the kuchen, or cakes., which the German influence means that there are a lot of! This is another lakeside town, this time on Lake Llanquihue, and this one has two volcanoes in view, Osorno and Calbuco, although I personally don't think they are as pretty as Villarica.

We had intended to take a few day trips out of town to places, but for one reason or another, we never quite got around to most of them. We did make it to Frutillar, so I'll post about that next time.

Lake Llanquihue and the Osorno (left) and Calbuco (right) Volcanoes, Puerto Varas

Being good in Pucon, Chile

The view from our hostel room, Villarica Volcano, Pucon

We took the new overnight direct flight from London to Santiago on 11 January, and spent the day loitering in the city, where a couple of ladies tried to have a go at dipping their hands into my handbag while we were at a café.

It was right next to me, so was quite flagrant. I spotted an odd movement, so checked, and kept a closer eye on it, which obviously stopped them. Then the waiter came over and suggested moving all of our bags, so clearly he had his suspicions too. They left just after that.

Emma and Olivia, Pucon

Aside from that, we had a pleasant enough day in a very hot Santiago, and then got an overnight bus down to Pucon. Having expected not to get much sleep on the flight, we had treated ourselves to a cama bus, which has seats that recline into a fully flat bed. We had a very comfortable night, and slept far better than on the plane.

Villarica Volcano, Pucon

In Pucon, we arrived at a hostel we had used before, where we were pleased to find that not only was our room ready for us, but they also had recently got two gorgeous little kittens, called Emma and Olivia. We soon settled in, and allowed ourselves to go out for a meal and a last beer that night, before starting our healthy regime in earnest the next day.

Fire Station, Pucon

In the morning, we hit the supermarkets, and bought ourselves plenty of healthy meats, fruit and vegetables, and set about planning our menu. We have opted to do the Slimming World plan, which is a little easier to do when you're on the move as we will be, and we know a few people who've had good results from it.

Not wanting to end up with any excuses for not sticking to it, we had made sure we were staying in places with decent kitchens, but we also supplemented this by bringing a few items that wouldn't normally be included in our travel kit. One is a large silicon collapsible microwave steamer, that can also go in the oven as a casserole dish; we have used that almost every day, and in fact we are considering making a regular part of our luggage. Another is a spiraliser, which is much less essential than the steamer, but it has encouraged us to eat more courgette in particular, as that works really well, and it has certainly been a talking point with our fellow travellers!

Olivia, Pucon

Then on Monday, we joined the gym in town and did our first session there. I knew I was unfit, but my goodness it was hard work. Still, we stuck to the plan for food and regular gym going, gradually increasing the time and effort spent there over the weeks.

We were both so exhausted after our gym efforts, and spending so much time cooking up healthy foods to try to keep things interesting, that we never really got around to doing anything much else. We concluded that taking bikes out wouldn't really get us that far and would just leave us too achy to do the gym the next day, and we were burning off more calories in there that we would have done cycling. So we decided to stick to the gym.

Emma, Pucon

We spent a lot of time semi watching the TV screens while we pounded away on the cross trainer etc, and one of the main things we were seeing was the horrific wild fires that were raging through the country further north. Whole towns had been destroyed in some cases, and it was heartbreaking to watch footage of people literally seeing the fire creeping up to their homes, doing everything they could to create firebreaks and divert it, but knowing that in all likelihood, their home would be destroyed.

When we saw the fire brigade in town doing a collection, we stopped and made a donation. The guy we spoke to was interested to hear we were from the UK, and quickly got his smartphone out to show us a photo. It was of him and his brother, as young boys, presenting flowers to The Queen when she had Prince Philip visited Pucon in 1968.

On our two days off per week, we walked into and around the town, and stopped off in one of the cafes for a well behaved cup of tea, virtuously resisting all of the rather lovely looking cakes.

And the good news is, albeit that it is slow, we are losing weight. I had hoped for one of those wonderful first weeks that you hear other people talking about, where you hop on the scales to find you've lost huge amounts. Sadly that was not to be, but we're not doing badly.

Aside from never-ending shopping and cooking, and being in the gym, we spent a lot of time enjoying the company of those two lovely kittens, whilst looking at the rather splendid view of the 2840m high Villarica Volcano, the closest of the three volcanoes in the area. It is an active volcano, and last erupted on 3 March 2015, albeit only a shortlived one. 

When we hit our first milestone target, we treated ourselves to a meal out at what we had heard was the best parilla in town, La Maga. We weren't disappointed. We treated ourselves to a fillet of beef, by which I mean the whole 1.5kg fillet, and it was delicious. We even had a drink to go with it.

We needed that treat, but we were right back on the straight and narrow afterwards.

If you're in Pucon for normal tourism, rather than chained to the gym, there is plenty to do here. Last time around we had a hike in Huerquehue National Park and went kayaking on the Lake. There are also plenty of bike rides out to waterfalls and other sites, there are thermal springs that you can go to, and of course, you can hike up the volcano if you feel so inspired.

We may not have seen much of Pucon ourselves this time, but it was certainly a good decision to come here to do this. It is working.

Christmas - and making radical new plans ...

With my back having been so bad for so long, we were a bit loathe to make plans for a new trip. We decided to stick around in London until after the New Year at least, and found a great cat sit close to where we used to live in Clerkenwell over Christmas. More on that later.

In thinking about where we wanted to go, we found ourselves discussing a whole range of possible destinations and reasons why we might or might not go, regardless of any (hopefully temporary) issues about my back.

Those of you who know us - or have seen our photos in some of the blog posts - will know that Nic and I are, well, let's just say on the large side! We've made some efforts to lose some weight before, but never really had the motivation or determination to succeed. However, since we 'retired' to be travelling most of the time, we notice the effects of the weight a bit more. Sometimes it is the smaller things, like low energy levels, difficulty buying clothes in some countries - Asia in general is not good for me, or that the simple fact that larger clothes makes limiting ourselves to carry-on luggage pretty difficult.

The bigger problem is that there are trips that we want to do, that we realistically can't. With Nic being a firm fan of lemurs, we'd love to spend time in Madagascar, seeing them in the wild, but we know that we just aren't physically capable of the level of hiking involved to get to the best places. We keep putting it off, telling ourselves "We'll wait until we're a bit fitter", but of course, we never are. We'd quite like to see gorillas and orangutans too, but the same issue arises.

We got to talking about all of this, and realised that we had finally reached the point where we were ready to really do something about it. The problem with my back helped the decision, because although I suspect my back may be a problem anyway, my extra weight isn't going to be helping it.

So we decided that, we would put our usual kind of travelling on hold, and instead of another trip like our previous ones, 2017 would be the year we get fit. And whilst Nic doesn't have as much to lose as me, so will get there much quicker, the reality is that, even with being very determined, it is going to take me well over a year to get to where I want to be, so we needed to get a good start in to have any hope of keeping the motivation going.

We knew we couldn't face the idea of diets and exercise in the gloom of a UK winter, so we decided to take ourselves off to the southern hemisphere. We also had to make sure that we went to a place where we knew we could get good, healthy food, not be too tempted by bad things, and preferably join a gym, as I'm a long way off from getting my exercise from big hikes or bike rides.

So we booked ourselves a flight to Chile in January, and figured we'd spend a couple of months in the southern lakes area, staying six weeks each in Pucon, which we had been to before and Puerto Varas. Our plan was that this would be enough time to kick start our new healthy lifestyle and make some headway in the weight loss, so that then we could spend a couple of months travelling in the more dangerous territory of Argentina.

When I say dangerous, I am of course only referring to the lure of good wine, empanadas, and that deliciously evil thing that is dulce de leche. For anyone not familiar with dulce de leche, think the very sweet, very rich toffee bit of a banoffee pie.

We are banking on the fact that once we have got going, we will be determined enough to resist most of the temptations at least, and whilst the fitness campaign may slow down a little during that time, we at least can avoid undoing whatever we may have achieved thus far.

Then after a short break back in the UK, we plan to do the same kind of thing again in the northern hemishere's summer, this time in Canada. We'll be off to Vancouver Island for a while, and then do some travelling across country. More on those plans closer to the time.

The intention is to continue in this way until we are both where we want to be, and we can finally see ourselves hiking to see the lemurs in Madagascar, or anything else that we want to do, as well as simply being fitter and healthier.

We don't know if we'll manage it, and we know that it will be a long hard slog, especially for me, but we're going to give it our best shot.

Of course in the meantime, it was Christmas, and being us, we couldn't resist the lure of one final blowout before we begin our new regime. So we filled our Christmas cat sit with turkey and all the trimmings, good wines, a chocolate truffle cake and a meringue gateau. We thoroughly enjoyed our Christmas, and felt stuffed, slightly heavier, but ready to make a start when we arrive in Chile in mid January.

Wish us luck!

Rigid in Rosario

So having got to our replacement hotel it was already pretty late and we just had time to find a pizza place for dinner before everywhere closed up. Unfortunately the next I woke up the next morning with considerable back pain.  This is something that I get occasionally and I have considered myself lucky that so far on this trip, given all the lengthy truck and bus journeys, some camping and a few dodgy beds, I had only had one minor episode of back pain in Bogota.

Unfortunately, whilst I wasn't entirely immobile, this wasn't minor either.  I could just about hobble around the room to get to the bathroom etc and after some back exercises and a few painkillers I could walk a short distance as long as I took it slowly.  It would still spasm quite painfully though, and sightseeing wasn't really an option if I was to to be able to carry my rucksack in a few days.

So we didn't see much of Rosario and there are no photos.  We got a cab downtown each day and found places where I could reasonably comfortably sit and we could do some internet stuff.  I managed to catch up with some overdue blogs - I do keep falling behind at the moment, so will try to do better - and we got quite a bit of accommodation booked for the rest of our time in South America, so it was useful in that way, but it would have been nice to see a bit more of the city. On the morning we left my back was a bit better but still not better, so it was just as well it was only one block to the bus station.