SPILLIN' IN CHILE

(Chillin' in Chile Part 2)

Before you can Chill in Chile, you have to get there. We chose the cheapest (ie. most indirect and most inconvenient) airline tickets. Grupo TACA, thought by some to be Take A Chance Airlines, had the best prices to Santiago, Chile. However, they involved a tour of Latin America - Washington, DC to San Salvador, to San Jose (Costa Rica), to Lima (Peru), to Santiago. A mere 4 flights, but we took a chance and won. No problems and great service. Of course, we got to Santiago at 2:00 AM and if you think we had hotel reservations, you clearly don't know us that well! We hooked up with two Israelis and found a taxi service to take us into the center. First, the taxi service made about 10 phone calls trying to find us a place to stay that wasn't booked. It all turned out well, because by 3:00 am, we were in a nice, clean place with hot water and shared bath for about $25. Somewhat expensive, but at 3:00 am, your choices are limited! Plus, a breakfast of toast, coffee and OREO COOKIES (!) was included in the price.

Our goal was Southern Chile, so that morning (about 9 hours later) found us heading to the bus station. This was when you could say our trip took a bad turn. Lois saw a hole in the sidewalk a little too late, fell and twisted her ankle quite badly. She decided she wanted to continue on to our next destination, so I got a taxi to the bus station, we asked for a bag of ice at the McDonalds and Lois iced it for a while as I got the bus tickets lined up. I think we were both afraid that the whole trip was over. After all, we were planning on doing a lot of camping, hiking and backpacking, none of which is too easy with crutches! Another major concern for Lois was that she ripped her brand new pants that she just bought at REI! Her fancy city pants!

We headed to Concepcion, about 7 hours south of Santiago. The bus ride was very comfortable. Reclining seats, foot rests, headphones to listen to the video - Tomb Raiders. It was in Spanish, but Angela Jolie looks good in any language. The entire ride south, we had glimpses of the snow capped Andes to the east while we were driving through the flat and dry lowlands. On arrival in Concepcion, a woman on our bus asked us if we need any help or directions to a hospedaje. She was from Santiago but was working in Concepcion for a few months. We told her where we were going, she said, “follow me” and got on a bus with us which we rode to the center. She told us where to get off and how to find our Hospedaje as she continued on to her destination.

We were both very worried about Lois' ankle, so we got an ace bandage, wrapped it tight and the following morning, went to the hospital. I wish I could tell you that the care was as good as I got in Cambodia, but... After waiting for 45 minutes or so, we saw a doctor who told Lois that she probably had a slight tear of some of the tendons, she should keep it compressed, ice it every night and it should be okay in 1 week. I think we both felt better after hearing this and after doing some surfing on the internet, reading that time is all that is needed. The hospital was rather dirty, smelled of urine and was overcrowded. Next time, we would go to a private clinic.

After the hospital, we wanted to continue our journey south. I asked someone how to get to the bus station. I couldn't understand his directions so he said, "follow me, it's easier", took us to a nearby bus stop and made sure we got on the correct route taxi to the terminal. We arrived in Valdivia at 9:00 pm, but it was still light out. An advantage of Southern Chile in the summer time is sunset doesn't occur until after 10:00. We headed to a nearby restaurant overlooking one of the two rivers that border Valdivia, had a couple pisco sours, a little ceviche and watched the sunset. The next day, a walk around Valdivia revealed a very pleasant town with a lively fish, fresh vegetable and flower market right on the riverside. Fishermen were cleaning their catch and selling the fish right there and a number of hungry sea lions were sunning themselves and eating all the fish innards that the fishermen threw their way.

There was an interesting history museum in Valdivia housed in a German immigrant's mansion. In an effort to develop Chile during the 1840s-1850s, the government encouraged immigration and a large number of Germans took them up on the offer. German is still spoken in many households and there are areas that seem more German than Chilean - for example, Frutillar, our next destination. We arrived in Frutillar and saw a crystal clear lake with a sand beach. It was not particuarly warm, but people were swimming in the lake and across the lake loomed a large volcano - with half its height completely covered in snow! We had only planned on stopping for lunch, but after seeing the beautiful scenery, decided to stay the night. Our hospedaje was owned by Carlos, a 6 feet tall, blond hair, blue eyed, 4th generation Chileno of pure German descent - who speaks German fluently. The town is vey neat and orderly with lots of flower boxes, signs in German and many houses built in the style of an alpine village.

Lakeside in Frutillar

So, what does a Chileno look like? Well, they come in all shapes, sizes and shades of white (we´ve seen no blacks). From the tall, light skinned, blue eyed Germans to people of Spanish descent, to the shorter, dark skinned people who have some Mapuche or other indigenous blood. Much more of a mixture than Peru or Ecuador where the indigenous blood is much stronger and there was less immigration from Europe.

Until this point in our trip, we had been in relatively populated and touristed areas of Chile. Not much of an adventure, so we headed to Hornopiren. (From here forward, you probably won´t be able to find the names of the cities I mention except on a very good map...). This was the first (but not the last) dirt road we hit in Chile. When we arrived in Hornopiren, it appeared empty. It was a small town of about 8 blocks by 5 blocks. People got off the bus and seemed to disappear! While Lois relaxed and looked for a nice dog to pet, I ran around looking for accomodations. I knocked on the door of one place and no one answered, but I saw a little girl of about 8 running toward me, so I waited. She showed me around the place. Very basic rooms with two twin beds, a light and not much else. Hot water shared bath. The girl´s mother showed up and seemed like a very pleasant woman. She showed me the kitchen – with a wood cookstove (something else we would continue to see everywhere down south) that we could use for preparing meals if we wanted and a living room for relaxing. The price - $17 - which is somewhat cheap for Chile. We decided to stay and since we didn´t want to cook our own dinner, asked about restaurants.

The seńora told me there were TWO restaurants in town. In the first one, the woman looked at us (with sympathy?) and said, “I´m here all alone, I really can´t prepare anything. Come back if you can´t find anything else and I´ll see what I can do.” – Uh-oh! The second place told us to come back at 8:00 and we could have dinner. After all, no normal person would even consider dinner before that time (at least in Chile)! So, we waited until 8:00 and sure enough, dinner was ready to be served. Beef or Hake. Seemed that we would not starve after all!

Our next destination was Caleta Gonzalo and privately owned Parque Pumalin. It was created by the American millionaire Douglas Tompkins (founder of The North Face and Esprit) to preserve one of the many beautiful areas in Chile. If you look at your map of Chile, you will see that there is no contiguous road that goes south through Chile. So, we had to take a ferry from Hornopiren to Caleto Gonzalo. The next morning, we went to the boat ramp about two hours early just to be sure and saw a restaurant right there. So, we had lunch. An awesome Caldillo de Mariscos – a sort of seafood stew. If only we knew about the restaurant the night before! We boarded the ferry with about 15 other pedestrians and 20 cars. The ride was approximately 5 hours long, but about 3 ˝ hours into it, the ferry stopped , I looked around and saw the sign that said “boat stop” bobbing in the middle of the water, another boat pulled up and 4 people disembarked. (Okay, there was no “boat stop” sign, but the rest really happened).

During the ferry ride we met a couple of very friendly Chilenos, a father and son, Froilan and Marcelo heading to the same park as us for a week-long vacation of hiking. It turned out that Froilan was the head of trauma surgery at a hospital in Santiago. Plus, they both spoke excellent English, having lived in the USA for 8 years during Pinochet´s reign. Froilan examined Lois´ankle and gave her approximately the same prognosis as the doctor in Concepcion, except he indicated the sprain was worse than the doctor in the hospital realized.

The ferry arrived in Parque Pumalin at about 9:45 PM. The boat ramp was in a small cove with a number of little coves on each side. The steep, green mountains came right down to the crystal clear water. There were scattered clouds hovering over the water and around the mountains. With no wind, it was almost silent as the sun began to set. We walked to the campground, through fields with soft, spongy grass. Trees and bushes were scattered throughout, while gravel paths meandered to bathrooms with running water, strategically located so they couldn’t be seen and a central pavilion for cooking and eating with picnic tables. The place seemed like a little piece of paradise to us. We found a secluded spot with a rushing stream nearby and set up camp. We had planned on staying for one night. It ended up being three…

Small Ferry To Hornopiren

Arrival in Caleta Gonzolo

all content is copyright © Paul Schneider, 2004.