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