Puerto Varas

Day 84 – A good thing it was a burglary not a robbery 

Of course, there was no hot water at 7am, or at 7.30am once it was too late for me to fit a shower in.  The lady did get up in time however to make sure we left the money on the bench as agreed before we left at 8!

We got to the bus station a bit after 8am to discover all buses to Bariloche were full and so immediately headed for an internet place to revise our plan.  We found a bus to Bariloche leaving from nearby Puerto Varas at 10am the next morning and so decided to book that bus and hang out for the day in up-and-coming-outdoor-adventure-town Puerto Varas rather than boring big-smoke-port-town Puerto Montt.  So off we went to find a local bus to take us the 45 minutes to Puerto Varas. 

We walked around town briefly before coming across Residencial Hellwig which looked nice so we were buzzed in and asked about rooms.  The landlady was very welcoming and we were shown a room, later realising this place was recommended in the guide book (although we didn’t see any other gringos only locals staying).  We dropped off our packs in the room, I pulled all my stuff out of my pack and finally got my shower and we hit the town to find breakfast which was fast approaching lunch.  After lunch we went back to the room to check the guidebook for recommended dinner spots (lunch was ordinary) and to pick up my box of stuff for home to take it to the post office. 

We went to the post office, but the price we were quoted to send the box was almost more than the value of its contents, so we decided to hold onto it until we were back in Argentina, where hopefully the price would be less than three figures!  So it was back to the room again. 

Having taken some photos of town already and the afternoon likely to be taken up with food/chocolate/ beer tastings rather than outdoor adventure sports, this time Matt dropped off his camera and document pouch and I got rid of the box I was carrying around and my jacket as it was beautiful and sunny outside.  And so out we went again for some afternoon tea.

Afternoon tea involved hot chocolate and a brownie at a new looking cafe that had opened up one block from our hotel.  The owner was obviously eager to please as we scored some extra chocolates when the brownie took more than 10 minutes to arrive at our table!  Then it was next door to the pub that had an awesome view over the lake front, some micro brews on tap and Wi-Fi for more Bolivia/Haiti research. 

The lake front.

Some locals enjoying the sunny weather.

 
Residencial Hellwig, the oldest residencial in town.

On the way back to the room we picked up some vegie burgers to eat back in the hotel sitting room and checked where the bus was leaving from in the morning.  After the vegie burgers we still weren't sated, so we went upstairs to plug in the laptop to charge and head out for ice-cream. 

The lock on our room door took us a few minutes to get open as the key was all of a sudden getting stuck.  It was when Matt went to get the charger out of his backpack that we realised there was no backpack.  It was so completely unbelievable that we both checked under the bed and in the cupboard before looking at each other and realising the whole thing was gone, along with Matt’s camera and my coat off the bed, all of our extra cash out of Matt’s pouch (but thankfully not his passport) and my box of things to send home.  I had actually meant to leave my entire bag in the room too when we went out, as all we needed was some money, but picked it up again out of habit!

So instead of going to get ice-cream we locked the room with our padlock, instead of the hotel provided one (probably too little too late) and went downstairs to speak to the manager (in charge of letting everyone in and out of the hotel!)  We asked him firstly if he had seen Matt’s gigantic backpack with an Australia flag slapped on the top walk out the door and secondly, to call the police.  Instead he decided to call the owners of the hotel, so we walked out and NEXT DOOR to the police station. 

The police were around in about 15 minutes time and we showed them the dodgy lock, explained that we had been back and forth to the room several times during the day, but it definitely happened during the last 3 hour outing because Matt’s camera and the box (being the last items placed in the room) were gone and attempted to secure a police report – the one thing necessary if we had any hope of getting some money back on insurance.  We had decided that if a whole backpack and sundry items could be walked out of a hotel with door security, then there was little chance of getting our stuff back.  Matt’s Spanish was completely pushed to the limit (we both joked that this should be a scenario bought up in all Spanish language exams!) but the police were reasonable, despite having a smoke and a laugh with the owner before interviewing any guests or taking down our story and refusing to note down everything we listed as missing in their report (causing some angst by me!).  They advised that we couldn’t have a copy of the report on the spot as it had to be typed (causing more angst).  The younger of the two officers finally cottoned on to the fact that we needed to have the report for insurance and we were promised it would be ready at 8am the next morning, something we weren’t sure would happen, but took comfort that this happened in Chile, one of the least corrupt of the South American countries.  It was then off into the night to find a phone booth to call our travel insurance, given the hotel manager wouldn’t let us use the hotel phone to reverse charge! 

After we called the insurance company, we wandered back to the hotel and tried to make light out of the situation.  Firstly, that we were burgled and not robbed (thank you Sarah).  We thought that the person may have been looking for our laptop and when they didn’t see it somewhere obvious decided to take Matt’s whole pack – mine being too hard as the contents was sprawled all over the floor!  Or maybe the thief wanted to do some camping with all the best gear!  We had done most of the camping we were going to do, so were unlikely to have to spend the time and energy replacing all that stuff and Matt was already an expert on shopping in Argentina (our next destination), given the first time around his stuff went missing!  The only item that wasn’t replaceable was my journal of notes and saved tickets etc. as thankfully we had a back up of all of our photos.  But the whole thing is a pain in the bum none-the-less…