The cute cats of Hostel del Rio went to town on my Airhawk yesterday! Gatos malos! (Airhawk = air cushion seat that has kept my bum and V more happy that it otherwise would have been for these thousands of kilometers). Ernesto saw it all happening yesterday as the orange kitty kneaded the dough on my seat. I figured the orange kitty had climbed enough trees that her claws weren’t that sharp. I was wrong. I rode on a flat ass tire all day.
Today’s crops: tree farms and canola. Hundreds of kilometers of tree farms, mostly pine and eucalyptus. And the canola! What a flower. The fields of it were in full bloom and the color is Crayola yellow, as bright of a yellow as you can imagine.
When we got to town at 4 we were pretty hungry. We found a nice, highly rated restaurant around the corner from our hotel, but it didn’t open until 7. We wandered the streets and found lots of closed restaurants. The only one open was “Beer Mania”, which should have been our first red flag. We walk in and there were smokers, which should have been our second red flag. When we were eventually given menus and learned that ⅔ of their menu is booze and ⅓ is food, we should have taken that as a third and final red flag and left the building. But alas, we stayed and ordered sandwiches. With nothing but meat and more meat on the menu, we ordered two “tradicional”. We have a pretty strict “no meat left behind” policy in that we eat every last piece of animal that we buy. It is simply the right thing to do. Today was the first time on our trip we left meat behind. Actually, I can’t even remember the last time I left meat on a plate (at least a decade and more likely two). It was so bad we couldn’t do it. Both of us left at least half a sandwich, and there were no perros in Temuco to give any take-away meat to. Ernie’s was supposedly pollo and mine was supposedly lomo, but E said they both tasted like fish. Actually he said his chicken tasted like it died of old age so maybe it wasn’t such an unethical thing to not eat it all… It was so bad. And we hadn’t eaten since our white toast and coffee breakfast eight hours ago. Sigh.
With some down time we finally did some more research about the saltpeter history here in Chile (we not only talked with Tona, Andres, Ana Maria and Andres about it, but we also saw a photo exhibit about it in the Museo de Artes in Santiago). It is a sad story… Basically it was discovered in the late 1800’s and dubbed “white gold”. It couldn’t be made in the lab/artificially and its primary uses were fertilizer and gunpowder. After discovering what turned out to be the largest reserve of it in the world, Peru, Bolivia and Chile went to war over what is now Northern Chile. They raped and pillaged the land to mine for saltrite in a totally ecologically unfriendly way, and between that and some Germans who figured out how to make it artificially in the 1940’s, the mining collapsed and the entire area is now a wasteland and full of ghost towns. The one city, Pisagua, translates to “piss water”, as the water is so dirty from past activities. And the moral fork in the heart, after its mining collapse it was used as a concentration camp for homosexuals in the 1920’s, and was continually used to imprison and torture political dissidents until the end of Augosto Pinochet’s reign in the 90’s. With ocean and desert there are many places to put bodies. Another fine example of how terrible we treat each other. Pinochet died of old age in 2006 and that doesn’t seem to be that long ago. Today we thought about buying a fridge magnet from a souvenir vendor that said “Recuerdo mi viaje a Chile!”, but got distracted by another one that had a donkey on it… The joyful bliss of travel!
(Appropriate transition I can’t think of), the discovery and claim to the saltrite mines are accredited as being the turning point for Chile; after mining and producing saltpeter Chile became part of the global economy and raised to a level of sophistication unparalleled by some of its neighbors. Ass, grass, gas, or saltrite, nothing rides for free.
October 28
We again got very lucky with the weather and were behind the rain all day. Wet roads but mostly dry selves. In preparation for the Southern Chile spring rains, Ernesto-Macgyver-without-the-mullet wired up my heated vest last night (it was included in the box of moto things we shipped ourselves to Tona in Santiago). Unfortunately before we shipped it I didn’t realize that it had to be hard wired into the moto battery, but mullet-less-Macgyver got some electrical tape and, with his Leatherman, rigged up the wires to one of our accessory plugs. I was a happy, toasty torso all day. We stopped in Villarrica to explore the lake and shops, but it was mostly practical shopping so that was no fun… By 12:30 were at our destination and with a partly cloudy but cold sky we were excited to head out on foot.
Pucon (accent on the o) is an affluent mountain town. Log-cabin style buildings, outdoor shops, good international restaurants, a lake, a volcano, and lots of forest. If it weren’t for the hundreds of black faced ibises and Andean lapwings I could have easily mistaken it for Whitefish, Montana. If you want to skydive, rock climb, mountain bike, kayak, raft, or ski, this place is for you. In our ridiculous outfits (Tara especially) we blended in perfectly. I enjoyed window shopping and very much wished I could actually shop… I could have dropped a few hundred USD on some blankets and hand knitted or woven goods for myself and the ladies in my life. The throws and the sweaters… sigh.
Monica Monica Monica. She is from Los Angeles and after she got married her and her husband overlanded in 2004. They had a wonderful experience in Pucon and fell in love with Southern Chile. In the years after their return they grew tired of the rat race. She said “a trip like this changes you” and we had a laugh over washing our underwear in sinks. They flew back to make sure it was as they remembered it, and by 2007 they pulled the trigger and moved down here. The open niche was gringo food. Real, American burgers. Ernesto’s had chilies, onions, cheese, and a mango salsa and mine was a peanut butter, pickle, bacon. And they were NOT served with french fries! And they imported real beer from other countries! We had English IPA’s! After only one beer my face turned red and I was drunk. When we were just about finished Monica came over to ask how our food was and I said “Dude. We left Oregon four months ago and this is the first real burger we have had, despite ordering several dozen along the way”. She laughed and totally understood. She told us they make all their own food there, even grinding their own meat. They grew enough to open a new place, and today was day six. She apologized for the lack of decor, but we couldn’t have cared less. It was fresh and delicious and not weird. Thank you Latitude 39.
October 29
Our luck ran out with the rain today and it was our first time in the cold rain. Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, etc. were all at least 70 if not 80+ degrees. The high temperature of the day was 49 (low of 42). We got to Valdivia very wet and very cold. I couldn’t feel my feet at all. They were totally numb. Luckily we only had 150 km ride from Pucon, so we got to town early enough to take really, really long hot showers. Even with the grey skies however, this part of Chile is incredibly beautiful. It is like the most beautiful parts of USAmerica and Canada but… not as worn.
After eating at the one sit down restaurant that was open close to our hotel (Sunday afternoon, 3 pm) we did a walking tour through town. We went to the main plaza, church, and mercado and it was all nothing to write home about. I think we are missing where to go/the cool parts of this town. I would Google it, but now we are back at our apart hotel and we are warm and on a couch and if I learned that there are things I’m missing I’d want to get up and do them. And I’ve got a major project this evening; I am drying our things with the hair dryer. Well, until it overheats and shuts itself off, then I wait 10 minutes for it to cool down and start again. Luckily we have some wine to fuel this project for the next several hours.
Every commercial so far has been for fashion or perfume. And everyone in the commercials is white. Also, we have a mini kitchen at our apart hotel and I just asked Ernie his opinion on putting our moto gloves and boot inserts in the oven. If it was on low, it functions like a drying oven, right? We aren’t sure, so we will keep truckin’ with the hair dryer…