Yesterday morning after a lovely stay with our hosts just outside Puerto Varas, we headed more or less north about 350 kms, deeper into the Lakes District. We started off on a cool cloudy morning and decided to head up the motorway and pay the tolls in order to save a bit of time. The back roads can be hard pavement one moment and gravel the next making to road long. We had Villarrica as our destination, but no specific plan as to how to reach there. On the way north we decided to head through the hills and out to the coast to visit Valdivia which was one of the most influential centres of Spanish control during colonization in the 1600-1800’s. There were some 17 forts built and it was a major control point for trade, etc. The city was substantially destroyed by an massive earthquake in 1960 as the city area dropped a remarkable 9 meters. The earthquake also trigger a massive tsunami and four volcanoes spontaneously erupted. Must have quite the day! In any event it was raining when we arrived and being Sunday almost everything was shut down. We cruised into the central plaza and found that there had been an eruption here just a few days ago with over 30 businesses heavily damaged.
Valdivia is a university town that was placed under curfew in the early days. There were broken windows everywhere and buildings were shattered down.
We still see thousands of people demonstrating in Santiago on tv some 17 days after the protests began. Better pensions, salaries and health care are in the fore front. A great deal of anger about the inequities in the country between the rich and the poor. The lack of opportunities.
Fortunately it was early Sunday morning and most of the students were likely still sleeping in after a busy Saturday night, so we took the opportunity to quietly leave the city. Not before being entertained by this fellow who was probably trying to make a little extra cash to cover tuition.
We contributed.
We drove back eastward along back roads and highways. Many of which turned out to be gravel roads. We stopped in a small town for lunch as well. Many families were out enjoying their Sunday lunch, cheaper than going out for dinner. In the small restaurant we visited, we were nicely received by the families there. The town was a work a day sort of place, not known for its tourism.
Lots of loose street dogs as has been the case most places we’ve been these past weeks, however here they have made makeshift accommodations available on the streets.
Nice to see some of the businesses providing a place for them to sleep. There were strays everywhere.
After a quick look at the lake we found our way out of town and headed off in search of Villarrica, our home for about three days. After a long day of driving we arrived and were welcomed by our hosts Julian and Magda. Julian is an expatriate Aussie and Magda is Chilean. A very nice couple who we have visited with regularly today. We just finished enjoying afternoon tea with them. They have been leasing the hotel here for about five years having taken over the building when it was still under construction. It’s a decent place and breakfast this morning was really nice.
This morning we were up a bit late, taking it slow after driving all day yesterday. The forecast today was for rain on and off, and that’s pretty much what happened. We headed out to walk the town and along the lake. Yesterday the town was almost at a dead stop, but today being Monday everything was open and it was a much more interesting place to be. Farmers and rural folks had brought their goods in to sell on the streets and this added nicely to the ambiance.
The spring flowers were wonderful!
Not our accommodation!
We wandered along the lake shore and I was interested to see more birds that I’d not seen previously.
We were caught in a heavy downpour at one point. A small restaurant owner called to us, but Annemarie said, buen and walked quickly away. It was a pretty humorous moment, a little like when she gets stuck on a bridge and just wants to get across it! In any event we waited out the storm under a tree.
There’s a really indigenous presence here, the Mapuche people. They opposed the early Spanish invasion quite vigorously with some good success early on. This fellow was one of their leaders at that time.
We took one last look at the lake,
and headed back into town. Lovely to see the Rhododendrons flowering so soon again.
We visited a Mapuche open market that was quite well set up.
A wall mural in town.
We visited a number grocery stores to see what was on the shelves. Something we like to do wherever we visit. We’ve noticed these massive hotdogs being served in restaurants and in one store we found a huge display of the various types of wieners! Don’t they know what’s put into these tubes?
The wine section was full of almost exclusively red wines. Yum!
On the way back to our place to pick up the car in order to drive up to the thermals for a soak I noticed that the back tire was looking a little low. S**t!
I figured that the almost new tire might have suffered on the gravel roads yesterday. Our hosts had a friend with a portable compressor who inflated the tire.
And then we went to a local tire shop to have the repair completed.
Turns out there was a screw in the tire which I think we picked up in Valdivia early yesterday. Turns out that the protestors are throwing them in front of the army and police vehicles to stop them and to slow them down. I guess they missed on when they were cleaning up afterwards, lol. A $7 fix!
Any way, saved us a 130 km drive today and we will visit the thermals after trekking in that area tomorrow. We plan to trek over by Villarrica Volcano in the National Park where we hope to find good views of the 2840 m high volcano. We have several options to choose from and we will figure that out tonight. The wet weather of the past two days has broken and we are now promised a week of sunny warm days. Yippee! However, we shall see. Hopefully we will get a couple of treks in over the next two days.
Time for dinner! Likely another post tomorrow.
1 comment:
What a lovely town. That's a huge load of leeks on the back of that truck! Any chance of a bowl of leek and potato soup?
Ken
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