Pucón, Chile 19-20 January 2009

Pucón is a place where we could have stayed a lot longer but our information source is no longer to be trusted! (Anyone considering buying a Footprint guide, we wouldn't recommend it – we think the one for Sth America is just crap. Lonely Planet or Rough Guide are much better choices.)


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To us, Pucón seemed like the Queenstown equivalent in Chile and was really set up for anyone who had energy. The setting was stunning as the town is sandwiched between a lake and a volcano



and offers loads of hiking, climbing, rafting, sailing, skydiving, windsurfing …. you name it, they’ll offer it. I will forever regret not climbing Volcan Villarrica that towered above the town although there were mixed reviews from those who had done it.



We stayed in a huge old place with a pool, tennis court (slightly overgrown) and a huge kitchen and lounge.



They also had a resident dog that was huge, only six months old and he got very boisterous



before collapsing for a siesta.



We passed these flower stands coming in on the bus



and it wasn’t until we got up close that we realised they were fake and made out of wood! How clever is that?



We revelled in cooking (steak again) for ourselves and I got quite a kick out of seeing wine sold in cartons like orange juice for less money! A 500ml carton of red wine (Concha y Toro, so a label we knew) was about 50 pence.



We headed down to the lakeside for a swim and got the shock of our lives to find every man and his dog down there! It was like Brighton beach in the UK on a nice day.



Pucón isn’t like any of the places either Euan or I have visited in Chile and is really geared up for visitors. There is loads of tourist tat but put that aside, the town is in a lovely area and actually offers visitors, should they want it, a bit more in terms of food and accommodation obviously in addition to the stunning setting. These guys were clever and carving horses so quickly (my camera is still working – its just that they were working under a yellow canvas).



We spent the evening chatting over wine to two very entertaining young trainee doctors from Holland who were so unorganised and had managed to leave their packs behind on buses and get into all sorts of scrapes. They were meant to be going partying but stayed with us until well after midnight before stumbling out the door to find some action.

We caught an overnight bus back up to Santiago and spent the day there sorting out all our onward flights that had somehow been completely cancelled. I don’t know what it is with us and incompetent airline employees but we seem to attract them like you wouldn’t believe.

On the flight out, I was playing around taking photos and most didn’t really come out but this caught my eye. It was a huge sand dune that seemed to be moving in on a town or city.



You might be able to see it better here.

Valdivia, Chile 16-18 January 2009

On hindsight, what we probably should have done was flown down south where there is great hiking and some amazing glaciers but Euan had been there before so we thought we’d see parts of Chile that he’d not been to. Valdivia, a tiny town on the edge of a river, sounded like a nice place to go but better still, had a fish market with resident sea lions….


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It turned out to be a pleasant pretty place in a lovely setting



and we met an American chap on the bus there so we ended up staying with a friend of his who had a hostel and we were able to cook for ourselves. We had enormous steaks cooked over a wood fire and they tasted delicious. We’d just come from NZ where fresh beef, lamb, chicken etc is just superb but I have to say the beef that we’ve eaten in Chile has equalled and sometimes bettered the NZ stuff. The supermarkets have many expert butchers and fresh beef in quantities I’ve never seen in supermarkets before. Hardly anything is pre-cut or packaged and the butchers will cut whatever you want however you want. We were asking for 3” thick steaks and we got change from £3 for two massive steaks. Needless to say we overdosed on steak. Raw mince sandwiches seem to be popular and butchers were mincing beef sometimes 3 or even 4 times to get it super fine.

The fish market was also good value, both for shopping and watching



and the salmon cost only £1.50/kg!



There were hungry sea lions lurking in the river



and birds that were flocking to feed on the scraps thrown by the fishermen.



These guys cleaned the fish and the one closest to us had a lime ice-block that,



in between bites, he placed it back on a bag with the fish cheeks he was cutting from the fish heads!



Valdivia was a pretty chilled place and there were some lovely spots along the riverside, like this seemingly makeshift bar on stilts



and the cops, when they weren’t letting their horses eat, hooned around the streets. They went clattering past us one day, really going for it waving their whips around, the horses skidding on the road. I’m sure they were just showing off.



At the river mouth there are about five forts and we visited two – Niebla and Corral, both on different sides of the river. The forts aren’t terribly interesting but there were some old cannons that were quite cool. The museum was in Spanish that wasn’t much use to me but Euan enjoyed it!



and I went and read a book. This one is book number 38 I think.



At the Corral fort there is a daily re-enactment of the Chilean capture of the fort from the Spanish. It was more comedy than drama but I think the guys enjoyed dressing up, fighting and shooting each other and the girls seemed to love wailing over their 'dead' men (to the point that the chap doing the commentary said that the dead men could come back to life so the girls would stop wailing).



Every year in the town of Niebla there is a massive food fair that lasts for two weeks and the small spread out town is full of people and music. It was pure chance that we were there during the fair and of course we checked it out! There was all sorts of wonderful food being cooked up. This chap was about to open a bag that contained shellfish, a leg of chicken and a thick piece of bacon, all in a mesh bag that had been broiled.



Empanadas were being prepared from scratch



and skewers of juicy beef, chorizo and other sausage were being cooked over hot coals. These were just the best and were served with a chunk of fresh bread on the end of the skewer that soaked up the juices from the meat.



We had brought our flight to Ecuador forward, giving us more time to spend in the Galapagos should we want to. We thought we’d check out one last place in Chile before heading back up to Santiago to fly out.

Santiago & Puerto Varas, Chile 11-14 January 2009

We’re a bit behind but it’s more due to a lack of internet access than time at the moment. That and I've not been particularly inspired by Chile (sorry to any Chileans reading this) so the prose hasn't come easily.

Anyhow, we arrived in Santiago in 32 degree heat with no breeze which had us moving for shade wherever we were and first impressions of the city weren’t that great. It may have been that we weren’t particularly motivated being on the road again after our lovely time in NZ or perhaps the city is just quite shabby.


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The heat was a shock and I resorted to using the £1 umbrella I’d bought in Kuala Lumpur and caught some very odd looks.



From the flight in, Santiago is located in a huge basin and while every day we were there the sky was an opaque blue with sweltering heat and little breeze, the mountains in the distance are high enough to still be capped with snow. Santiago didn’t really grab us which turned out to be quite lucky as we had to spend a crazy amount of time sorting out the remainder of our flights South America and the US. We didn’t take many photos of the city but the main square was quite picturesque.



Some of the older buildings reminded us of London.



We visited Valparaiso for the day before an overnight bus trip. Valparaiso is apparently a popular tourist destination in Chile and is an old port city, the buildings of which line the surrounding hills. It’s about two hours drive from Santiago on the coast so a good place to go for the day.



There are many cable cars that run almost vertically up the hillside, saving the lazy from a steep walk. Often they’re hidden in between two buildings like this, so easy to miss!



The old Navy building was impressive



but we were glad we hadn’t come here to stay. There were loads of stray dogs, more than I’ve seen anywhere else, more homeless people than we’ve seen for a long time and we were witness to a crowd of locals keeping a thief at bay until the police arrived and dragged him off to the boos and jeers of the crowd. It wasn’t the sort of place you felt you could relax in, put it that way.

That night we headed on an overnight bus 1000km south to Puerto Varas, a German colony on the edge of Lake Llanquihue. There were stunning views of Volcan Osorno when the cloud lifted and the lake was pleasant but again we were a bit under-whelmed so decided to head across to Bariloche in Argentina.

The most memorable thing about Puerto Varas was this dog that followed us all around town for the morning and, when she lost us, picked us up again a few hours later. We didn’t feed her, talk to her or anything but when I sat down she was right up there with me, snuggling in. A real smooch. She even followed us back to our hostel and sat outside the gate waiting for us to come out. We tried to lose her by hiding behind cars, bushes etc but she always found us. We guessed hiding from a dog behind cars and bushes wasn’t normal tourist behaviour but we had fun nonetheless.