Reporting still from Chile. I’ll get the weather report out right off the bat. While last year was considered the best by people who have lived here all their lives, this year has been on the other end of the spectrum. We had just sporadic sunshine from the beginning of December when we got here until the middle of January. Those cloudy days were followed by a pretty good month. On days we did not have total sun, it was out by noon. Life was good. I now have to report though that the gloomy days are back, and we are back in the mode of, when the sun comes out, we go to the beach, for you don’t know when it will appear again. We still have over a month to go in Chile, so Mr. Sun has plenty of time to redeem himself.
Golfing has not been happening much either, for Maria has a problem with her thumb that she has been nursing. Without the beach and without golf, much time has been spent working around the house and walking. Almost weekly, I hike to Cachagua from Zapallar, and sometimes back again.
We did take a day trip up to the quartz mine in Tilama, a loop starting up the coast and then returning inland over and through the mountains. While the mine has been bought and closed, so you can no longer search for your own quartzes, there are a couple guys there selling all sorts in roadside stands. Very beautiful, and we added quite a few different types of quartz to our collection. The drive back itself was surreal. There we a couple of old one-lane bridges that started us off, but the highlight for me was the antiquated tunnels, one lane holes through the mountains. One was especially unique. It had to be at least a kilometer long, one-lane and dirt, water dripping off the sides pooling on the ‘road’. It was perfectly straight, so as you entered the pitch dark, in the very distance you saw a small pin-point of light, the other end which slowly grew bigger as you traversed the tunnel. There were no traffic controls on this tunnel, and since you could not pass in it, you just had to look for headlights to make sure that no one was already coming from the other direction before you entered. I loved it, Maria was terrified, but we survived this very unique passage.
We rented our house out a couple times, and ended up with very nice couples. We only rent the house to couples, so we can lock our bedroom and we don’t have to pack everything. They are travelers from overseas, so no children, no parties; very easy, on us and on the house. The first time, to a couple from Denmark, we went to Santiago so Maria could take care of family business and then to Gaucarhue just south of Santiago to spend a few days with our friends Victor and Claudia. The second rental was to a couple from New Jersey. That time, we decided to take a trip to the south of Chile, to the land of lakes and volcanoes.
The rest of Chile has different weather than the coast. Santiago is always hot, but who wants to spend his time in the City. The weather patterns of the south are days of rain followed by days of sunshine. When it rains, it generally pours. When it is sunny, it is very, very nice. We went ‘down under’ for 10 days, and had only 2 tolerable days of rain.
The south is a whole different basket than the beach. Because of the periodic rains, everything is so very green. The rivers and lakes are full. Waterfalls are spectacular. The air is super clean. The vistas are beautiful. Throughout the south, a snow covered volcano is usually always in view, towering behind a green field or over a crystal blue lake. It is magnificent. The main problem with going to the south is it is so far away. We ‘meandered’ down to Puerto Varas, 1000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Santiago. Lots of driving. The one other problem in going to the south in the middle of February is that everyone else does too. So, long drive, crowds, expensive high season rates, but one does it because it is so magnificent. And one enjoys it immensely.
We started by staying a few days with Victor and Claudia on their farm. Subsequently, as we went south, we tried to hit our friends when their houses were not packed with others. We stayed a couple days with Heinz and Alice outside Temuco, whom we always have a good time with. We caught them just after they partied for 10 days with their families, so we all mostly chilled by the river or pool, and of course engaged in the tradition of eating. Temuco is always a picturesque area, what with the central artesian market and the Mapoche Indians traveling miles to and from town in their horse drawn carts.
After that, we traveled to Lago Ranco to spend a night with Ximena after her house cleared out a little. That coincided with Valentine’s Day, which both Maria and I had overlooked, but Ximena, Antonia, et al were prepared for a nice asado for lunch and a dinner decorated with red. It was a quick overnight stay, but with very good friends.
The next stop continuing south was Puerto Varas, which is a cute little town (well a cute growing town) that we have always liked. It bills itself as the center for tourism of the south; that’s probably true because there are so many beautiful places you can easily get to from there. It is on a lake with the volcano Orsono majestically sitting on the far side. We rendezvoused with Claudia and Victor, and over the next few days, shared some meals, stayed a night in their hotel which was new and luxurious, and took a day trip that included driving up the side of the volcano, hiking to a waterfall, and taking a launch around Lago Todos Los Santos. Maria and I took an afternoon to go into Puerto Montt to wander the feria de artesania; my wife loves shopping in the craft fairs, even in the pouring rain. We lunched in the Angelmo seafood district, a hundred little restaurants selling every imaginable fish and shellfish, particularly king crab which comes from the area.
The time came for us to pay our dues; the long, long drive home. For sanity, we broke the 600 mile drive back into 2 days, stopping in Los Angeles at a nice little hotel we had found and a delicious steak dinner.
On the way down, we decided to head out to the coast and visit some of the areas that we had been to in 2006 before they had been devastated by the earthquake and tsunami last year (Feb 27th). Our first stop was in Pelluhue. The 100 houses and buildings within 100 yards of the coast were gone, except for one house that was thrown intact on top of another. I found out later that they were going to shore up this house, sloping floors and all, and turn it into a tsunami memorial museum. Good idea.
We next stopped in Dichato, a town on a bay near Concepcion, kind of a poor people’s Zapallar. It unfortunately was near the epicenter of the quake, and smashed head-on by the tsunami. As we dropped down towards the beach, we were amazed and confused at all the people on the streets of the hillsides. And when we got to the beach, there were very few people around and not a soul on the beach itself. Strange for such a pretty day, until a policeman informed us that a 6.9 earthquake had just happened a half hour before, and that everyone had been evacuated to the hillsides in fear of another tsunami. We had felt nothing in the car driving. So what had been a packed beach 1/2 hour before was now totally deserted. Although Maria was nervous, we spent some time walking there, just us and all those policemen and firemen. They didn’t shoo us away, so I guess it had been enough time since the evacuation that they were no longer concerned about a tsunami. The people though were in no hurry to come down from the hillsides,
Dichato itself had much more extensive damage from the tsunami. The town was flat by the seaside, and it appeared the tsunami wiped out most of everything for about 400-500 yards to the base of the closest hillside. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of people are sheltered in ‘villages’ of small wooden huts on the hillsides. It is going to be a long recovery for that town. I thought originally of staying in Dichato or even Concepcion for the night, but with that earthquake that day, Maria would hear none of that. We headed inland, drove 3 more hours late into the night, and finally ended up finding the nice little hotel in unspectacular Los Angeles. We were greeted there with another significant earthquake (in the 5’s), and in fact, over the next 4 days, had lots of aftershocks, with at least one 6+ each day. Last year, after the earthquakes, everyone was on edge at least throughout March and April when we were here. You could visually see that this series of aftershocks put everyone back in the nervous state of mind. And they expect the aftershocks from last year quake to go on for 4-5 more years.
Most of the towns we went through in that area still showed significant signs of earthquake damage: Talca, Cauquenes, Pelluhue, Dichato, Concepcion, Los Angeles. We had heard last year that Heinz and Alice’s house in Temuco had lots of damage, but they had completed most of their repairs; a new roof, replacing (leveling) many of the floors, and new, dual-paned windows to replace the shattered glass. Getting to their house was confusing, for the county bridge over the river had fallen. Taking a new temporary bridge disoriented me, but we eventually found their farm. It turns out that the 25 minute drive to their house from Temuco was an hour and a half detour for 6 months after the quake until that temporary bridge was erected. With kids going to school, they had to move into town until the new bridge was in. Besides the devastation of last year’s earthquake, there are still other continuing sagas in Chile. For those of you who didn’t hear at the time, a volcano in the south erupted in May of 2008, forcing 8,000 residents to evacuate from the town of Chaiten (We had visited Chaiten in 2001). The volcano had not erupted in 9,400 years. “As clouds of toxic ash and dust towered into the sky, they ionised the air, generating an explosive electrical storm. Colossal forks of lightning sparked around the noxious plume as it spewed from the volcano’s crater, creating an image of raw, terrifying energy – as if the air itself were ablaze”. What was not destroyed by ash was later damaged by devastating floods. Last week, the southern part of that city finally got electricity restored, nearly 3 years after the eruption; those residents that finally returned have survived on generators and car batteries since then. Potable water, sewage, and sanitation are expected soon. I am sure they are not holding their breath for those things to happen. (For some amazing pictures of the eruption, Google ‘Chaiten volcano eruption’)
Well, those 4 days of aftershocks have subsided, so Maria is sleeping more peacefully. Now if only these clouds would take a hike…
