Downtown Puerto Montt and Isla Tenglo

Puerto Montt is the first city landfall for Madrone on mainland Chile.  Enjoying a position overlooking the huge bay of Seno Renocalví, the scenery surrounding town is beautiful.  Forested Isla Tenglo lies just across a narrow channel, snow-covered Volcán Osorno dominates the landscape to the north, and the tips of the Andes (yes, those really are the Andes!) poke above the forested foothills to the west.

While walking through a neighborhood we found these happy backyard chickens

The town is a good place for a first stop after an ocean passage.  The population of ~100,000 people supports multiple large supermarkets and the large local fishing fleet means that marine supplies are not too hard to find.

Working boats along the shore of Isla Tenglo

Despite its enviable location at the northern end of Patagonia, Puerto Montt doesn’t really cater to tourists.  Instead, it’s a working town that seems to accept that some tourists will pass through.

Many store windows were broken and lots of graffiti remains from the protests

Part of the feel of the place is undoubtedly increased by the results of the recent demonstrations across Chile.  Sparked by a modest increase in subway fares in the capital of Santiago, the protests quickly spread across the country and became about the very large gap in wealth and opportunity between the rich and poor in the country.  Chile is the most developed country in South America, but average salaries are still very low while the cost of living seems, to us as outsiders, to be quite high.

While the demonstrations mostly ended several months ago after the government imposed a curfew and deployed the military, Puerto Montt still shows the scars.  Much of what likely was a bustling downtown is now blocks and blocks of boarded up glass storefronts that were shattered during the demonstrations.  Grafitti is everywhere – based on the subject of the demonstrations, some of it is predictable (New Constitution!, Change the President!) and some a little bizarre (Save the Animals!, Communism is Slavery!).