Escape Expedition 19 April 2013
Since my last post my wife Elaine and daughter Heather have joined Jay and I down here in Valdivia.  They flew in to Puerto Montt, which is about two and a half hours south of here via rental car or eighteen hours via boat.  They flew into Puerto Montt because that's where we thought we would be by now.  So Jay and I rented a car and took a leisurely drive down to Puerto Montt.  On the way down there we drove out on the point of land near Fruitillar to view one of the big lakes and some of the volcanoes.  Southern Chile has a string of huge lakes that are ringed with resort towns with hot springs, fed by the volcanos.  They look very European because many of the early settlers are from Germany.  Here are some pictures of the volcano by the lake at Fruitillar:

Many places kind of remind you of traveling in Switzerland or some quaint European town, like the picture of the barn above with the lake and volcano in the background, only in Switzerland, I guess it would be a mountain instead.
Elaine and Heather were beat by the time they got here because they had been flying or sitting at airports for over 24 hours.  So we didn't take them on the tour around the point out by the lake at Fruitillar, but headed straight back to Valdivia so they could get on the boat, get cleaned up, and get some rest.  Elaine hopped right in the shower, but Heather found her spot at the table on the bridge deck where she could look at her books or color.  They had already eaten on the plane so Jay just cooked up some local  sausages on the grill and made a caesar salad including the dressing from scratch.  It was awesome!  I decided to keep the rental car one more day so we could drive to Niebla, a town seventeen kilometers away that is very scenic and has the best fish soup ever.  It has lots of oysters, squid, fish, crab claws, clams, etc. in it and tastes great.  Heather and I split a bowl of the soup and Elaine and Jay each had their own bowl.  Here are a couple of pictures from the restaurant and beach front at Niebla—which means fog, because it is foggy there a  lot.

Earlier in the day Jay took Elaine and Heather in to town for a tour while I stayed on the boat to oversee some of the work going on.  The next day, we turned the rental car in and were again dependent on the local bus service.  Bus #20 comes by our marina about every ten minutes so the wait is never long.  Here's the reliable Bus #20 that we all take to town and back.

The next morning, Heather and I went on a hike around the marina while Elaine rested up.  We hiked up to the the marina club house, which we decided was "our secret place" because only we knew about it (see the picture below).  It's up a couple big flights of stairs so it was a real adventure for Heather.  

Then we hiked over to the the adjacent marina where Heather took this picture of me by this giant anchor.  We decided this anchor was much too big for our boat so we just went down on the dock to chat with some of our new friends there.  We met a guy named Steve who runs expeditions down to South Georgia Island and to Antarctica.  You can see his web page at 

http://www.xplore-expeditions.com/.  He's a very experienced Captain and was celebrating just buying out his other partners so now he owns the boat himself.  Jay and I went over to his boat that night to have a few beers and some barbequed chicken and sausages.  Elaine and Heather declined to go and chose to stay on the boat to rest.  

The next day Jay and Elaine went into town on the bus to look around while Heather and I stayed on the boat to get some things done.  Jay found these huge ears of corn:

So later that day we cooked them up with a chicken we had in the refrigerator and made some toast from local bread that we bought to go with the meal.  

Earlier in the afternoon, Elaine was feeling ambitious so she took the shower curtains down that Jay and I had put up and hemmed them up.  They were too long and were dragging on the bottom of the shower.  She went out on the back deck of the boat where she had a great view of the river and some cormorants that were sitting on a partially submerged tree.  

Yesterday, we awoke to another great sunrise (see picture below) and planned to go sailing later in the day.  Unfortunately, we discovered some problems with our starboard engine.  It hasn't been running well so I asked Alwoplast to check it out.  We discovered that the springs in the injector pump were broken.  A defect in the engine as it was delivered.  So, right now we're waiting on new springs or a new pump.  Since we can't sail tomorrow, we plan to take the dinghy around to explore some of the local islands in the river.  Well, that's it for tonight.  I'll update you again in a day or two on our progress.