South Trip

The trip south got off to a bad start. In the five days that we were home, we took the car to the mechanic twice first to have the engine fan fixed and then to have the radiator cleaned out and put back together. Neither repair solved the problem, so on Sunday, January 31^st we headed south anyway, with the heat on full blast trying not to overheat the car.

We arrived in Talca three hours after setting out from Santiago for an afternoon tea at the house of one of my youngest sisters classmates from the last time that we were in Chile. Her mother and mine had kept in touch. After tea and cake and a dip in their pool we continued south looking for a campground. By 11:30pm we had not found a campground so we stayed in a hotel in Chillan and had sandwiches in the hotel restaurant before going to bed.

The next morning we drove on to Los Angeles, where we stocked on up groceries before driving out to Junquillos, the estate of my mother’s colleague, Enrique’s, wife’s family. We passed a gorgeous volcano on the way and of course stopped for photos. The road to the house from the main road is a gravel one that winds through the trees, coming out of the forest on the far side of the polo field in front of the house. We arrived at the house, or should I say mansion, just in time for lunch. The big house had 12 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms as well as a dinning room that could seat 20 and a huge living room with a two story ceiling and windows that ran from top to bottom, not to mention a grand piano, floor to ceiling book shelves full of old books and the biggest chandelier I have ever seen. We stayed in the guesthouse, just down the hill, a three-bedroom cottage that was perfectly suited for us.

In the carriage house, sure enough, there were carriages. 8 carriages of a variety of ages and styles were on display. Two of them have been restored so as to be of use, and we even got to ride around the lake in one of them. We went down to the lake for an evening swim before dinner and got to take kayaks and inner tubes around the lake just before sunset. Walking up from the lake we ran into the herd of alpacas that live on the farm right by the tennis courts.

On Tuesday, my father and I drove the car to Concepcion, the biggest city in southern Chile, to the Mitsubishi repair guy to have it looked at again. We left the car with him and returned to Junquillos by taking first a bus to Los Angeles and then a second bus to Santa Barbara where Josephina, Enrique’s wife, picked us up.

Wednesday, after waking up to the cries of the farms peacock herd, we were invited up to the main house for tea and were told that we had to prepare a skit. The kids at the main house had prepared a version of little red riding hood. We, myself, my brother, and my three little sisters, took a short joke and turned it into a skit for the adults. Our translation couldn’t have been too bad, because the punch line still got lots of laughs. The skit was followed by tea and cake and lots of conversation. I finally took my siblings home around 8:30pm and cooked them dinner before going back up to the big house for “the adult dinner” and drinks.

Thursday morning we covered ourselves in sunscreen and rode the horses down to the blueberry fields. One of Josephina’s cousins had studied agriculture and in the last few years had turned the empty fields of the family estate into a blueberry and hazelnut farm. We picked bags full of blueberries to take home. At the big house, they turned most of the blueberries into jam. At our cottage we baked crisps and scones.

Friday, our last day, we invited everyone over for tea at our cottage and to try our blueberry sweets. Blueberries are not very common in Chile, so few Chileans know what to make with them and were surprised at the variety of things we knew how to make with them and how delicious they turned out.

Saturday morning we packed up the trunks, leaving them and the tents and camping gear in one of the storage rooms at the big house. With each of us taking a backpack, as well as a couple of bags of food, guidebooks, etc. we caught a ride into town and took a bus to Los Angeles. There we caught a taxi to the other bus station and took another bus to Concepcion. As the car was not yet ready, we hopped on another bus to Dichato, a coastal town north of Concepcion. We arrived to a torrential downpour, found a hotel, and braved the weather to find a restaurant on the beach.

The next morning we got up and took two busses to Talcahuano, the port town just south of Concepcion. There we took a tour of the boat “Huascar,” the second iron clad battleship in the world. The ship was Peruvian, captured by the Chilean navy at the end of the war of the pacific. The ship was restored and is still on display as a national treasure. To get onto the ship, you climb on a raft with twenty to thirty people. Two navy seamen then pull the raft from shore out to the boat along a rope.

On the boat is a memorial to Captain Arturo Prat, the father of the Chilean navy, who was killed on the ship in an earlier battle of the War of the Pacific. He looks very much like my dad, to the point that a little girl on the boat asked him if he was Arturo Prat. My dad said no, but that Arturo Prat was his grandfather. The girl looked surprised to say the least.

We had a seafood lunch on the coast before taking the buses back to Dichato, where us girls hit the streets for some shopping and Sterling rode a pedal car with my father.

The next morning we packed up and headed back through Concepcion to Lota, a mining town south of the city. We took a tour of the local mine, El Chiflon del Diablo, no longer in use. Because it only closed in 1997, the tour guide was a former miner who lost his arm in a mine collapse in 1992. We took an old mining elevator down into the main mine shaft. The guy was very much encouraging us all to get an education so that we didn't have to work the way he had. He told us about how he was trapped in the mine three different times and the time he lost his arm he was down there for over 48 hours and then spent almost two and a half years in the hospital culminating in the loss of his arm from about three inches above the elbow. We got to go down one of the arms of the mine and see the coal vein in the walls. The mine was out underneath 40 feet of ocean and 17 feet of sea floor. We slowly climbed out seeing the cart shafts and the canary cage. We all had hard hats with lights on them and at one point we all turned our lights off to see what it would be like to be blind. Even after five minutes I couldn’t adjust to the darkness; we could see absolutely nothing. At the mine we also got to see an old movie set and even bought a bootleg copy of the film that was shot there from one of the old miners.

We then went up to the botanical gardens; more beautiful if not as interesting as the mine. They had been the personal gardens of the family that had owned the coal mine before the government nationalized it in the fifties or sixties. After the garden we went to the historical museum, a small collection of things owned by the same family. The most interesting part was looking at the birthdates and wedding date and figuring out that the couple, first cousins, had married about six months before the birth of their first child. Scandalous!

Tuesday morning we left Lota, after poking around the local cultural center and headed back to Concepcion to pick up the car. We arrived to find out that the car would not be ready until that afternoon so we visited the local art museum, famous for its mural “Presencia de America Latina,” painted by Mexican muralist Jorge Gonzalez Camarena in 1964. It was the most beautiful mural I have ever seen and did a wonderful job of depicting the history of the region.

After gyros at a Middle Eastern restaurant, where we met a colorful Texan who had moved to Chile because of his dislike for the US government, we headed off toward a second museum. About a block from the restaurant, my mother tripped on the uneven sidewalk and caught her pinky finger on a fence as she fell. It immediately began swelling and was off at an odd angle, so we changed directions and walked the three blocks to the local hospital. There we paid $34 to be seen and waited over an hour before my mother was admitted. No one was allowed to go in with her, so my father, siblings, and I waited in a café just outside the hospital, receiving phone calls every half hour or so with an update from my mom. The doctors took x-rays and determined that her finger would be fine. It was not broken or dislocated, though it sure looked it (and still does a month and a half later).

Despite many assurances that he would call us the minute the car was ready, at 7pm my father and I headed to the car shop, waited about half and hour, then picked up my mother and siblings at the hospital and headed up to Junquillos to pick up the trunks and camping gear we had left.

We arrived around 11pm just in time for some birthday cake, as it was Josephina’s mother’s birthday. We packed up the car and left just after midnight to get some of the drive behind us. We arrived in Villarica around 4 in the morning only to find every hotel and campground full. We found a back road and slept in the car on the side of the road for about 4 hours before continuing on the half hour to Pucon for breakfast and photos of the Villarica volcano nearby.

We crossed the border into Argentina in the shadow of the Lanin volcano without much hassle. We arrived in San Martin de los Andes and met up with Cambria’s boyfriend, Tomaz’s family for a barbeque on the lakeshore. Tomaz’s family had been in Argentina for the previous two weeks.

After the barbeque we found a campground and set up the tents before meeting Tomaz’s family in town for some light shopping and birthday cake, since it was my birthday.

Thursday we started the drive down to San Carlos de Bariloche. After having the head gaskets on the car replaced and repaired we needed to have them retightened by a mechanic after 1000 kilometers. Therefore, we were hoping to get to Bariloche, as it is now called, by Friday.

Thursday we made it most of the way along the dirt road known as the seven lakes road, seeing beautiful views. My mother said that it looked just like Switzerland. We camped en route on the edge of Lago Espejo Chico, or Little Mirror Lake.

Friday we finished the drive and arrived in Bariloche in time for lunch. Leave the campground that morning we had broken a shock absorber, making for another bumpy ride, and so we set off to find a mechanic. Unfortunately every mechanic we could find was closed from noon to four for lunch, so we found a wonderful little Italian restaurant for lunch.

After lunch we found a mechanic to weld the shock, but the gaskets could only be tightened when the engine was completely cold, something that takes four hours, so we made an appointment for Monday morning and headed back out to one of the lakes at Villa La Angostura.

Saturday we did laundry in the morning and then took a boat trip out the peninsula in town where a national park is home to hundreds of arrayanes trees, whose bark looks like cinnamon. From there we hiked the thirteen kilometers back to town, a wonderful hike because of the perfect weather.

We had dinner at a restaurant in town: wild boar and deer, or mountain food as it is called in Argentina. Not bad.

Sunday we headed back to San Carlos de Bariloche, where we stopped at one of the many chocolate shops the town is famous for, for 80% Cacao ice cream and souvenir shopping.

After dinner we headed up to the campground bar to catch some of the winter Olympics on TV and check email. I have officially been accepted into a masters program at the University of Washington! When we headed back down to camp, we discovered that one of the tires was flat, and so at one in the morning, my parents put on the spare so that we wouldn’t have to do it at six am.

My dad woke me up at six am to go into town with him to park outside the mechanics so that the engine could cool before the mechanic shop opened at nine. We slept a little in the car and when the mechanic arrived we went and got breakfast. The car was done at 11:30am and we headed to a tire repair shop to get the tire patched. Everything went smoothly, until when putting the tire back on the car, the tire guy broke a bolt. He sent his assistant into town to get a new one while he took apart the wheel. Because it was after noon, no car shops were open, so the assistant was unsuccessful. Finally a friend of his came by and said that he may have one that was the right size at home and went to check. He conjured one up out of somewhere and helped put the wheel back together. I am thankful that he was there as the tire guy did not inspire much confidence. By the time the car was fixed, it was two pm so we picked up my mother and siblings and headed south.

We spent the night north of Esquel in a town called Epuyen. We woke up to sheep in the campsite that were barely afraid of humans. One ate out of my hand.

Tuesday we continued on to Trevelin, a small town south of Esquel, known for its Welsh immigrants. There we had an old fashioned Welsh tea including tea, scones, toast, various jams, peach pie, raspberry tart, cream cake, and a traditional fruit and nut bread.

After tea we continued on to Parque los Alerces, where we camped for the night. Entering the park, the guard had originally told us that it would be 30 Argentine pesos a person, for our family, a sum of about 55 dollars just to get into the park. My mother told him that we were just there to camp for the night and after checking that we would not be passing another guard station told us that he could let us in for 50 pesos, only about 12 dollars.

Wednesday morning we left the park, stopping to see the rock paintings there, interesting, but not the best-preserved rock art I have seen. From there we crossed the border back into Chile and drove on to the town of Puerto Cardenas where we were to meet my parents friends Diego and Mary Anne and their kids. The border cross was uneventful until they realized that we had some peacock feathers that Neelam had collected at Junquillos. We were told that we had to throw them away. Just before we left, the guy in charge pulled my parents into his office. He explained that he knew the feathers were Neelam’s and that if we didn’t let his men see us, that we could take them. We hid them for the rest of the trip.

We arrived in town and found only one established campground, so we tried there. Sure enough, they had a reservation for us. Diego and Mary Anne had not yet arrived. Just before we arrived it had started to pour so we set up the tents in the rain and headed over to the dining room at the hotel attached the campground for dinner. Just before midnight Diego and Mary Anne arrived and opted to stay in a cabin instead of camp out with us.

We arrived back at camp to find a river running through the girls tent. My parents tent, of course, was dry. After bailing out buckets of water, digging trenches around the tent, and soaking five towels, only to discover that the downhill half of the tent was sitting on water and felt something like walking on a waterbed, I called it quits and set up my brothers two-man tent in the entrance to the storage closet outside the bathrooms (my brother was sleeping with my parents). One of my sisters, Kalindi, joined me and we spent the night nice and dry.

The next morning it had cleared up a little and Diego and Mary Anne and the five of their eight kids that had come on the trip joined us in the campground. They set up their camp and tried to make a fire. They lit a fire and then decided it was too small so poured gasoline on it. Of course the whole thing burst into flames causing Diego to drop the gas can, spreading the fire further. My father grabbed the shovel and shoveled dirt over the fire to put it out before it caught the picnic area on fire. We put the fire out, but the picnic bench smoldered for another half hour or so.

That afternoon we went into town and Diego and the kids went fishing while Mary Anne, my mother, my father, Kalindi, and I checked out a local fishing lodge and walked around town. My brother, Sterling, was the only one to catch a fish, which we cooked up for appetizers.

After fishing it started to rain again so we headed to the hot springs. The spring water had been diverted into a large pool. It was very relaxing and we stayed for about two hours.

Friday we drove into Chaiten to see the damage caused to the town from the volcano that erupted a year before. Most of the houses in town had been abandoned. The original population of 4,000 people had been reduced to only about 200. The gas station had opened three days before our visit and we were only able to find one open restaurant. Throughout the town there was ash scattered. The locals said that on days when it wasn’t rainy, the ash floats around, coating everything, and making it hard to breath. Along the river the mudflows had buried the homes for two blocks in either direction to the second story. When the volcano erupted ash had accumulated all over. Eventually it became too much, got too wet, and washed down the river, widening the river, and destroying all of the river front property. The bay that Chaiten sits on had been filled in with the mud and ash, extending the beach by over 50 yards. The build up of ash in the bay was causing problems for the port nearby. Serious consideration has been given to moving the entire town over and the port as well.

While we were in Chaiten we checked in with the boat company to be sure that our reservation was on the list for the next day’s boat to Puerto Montt. Because southern Chile is riddled with lakes and bays, the main road south stops in Puerto Montt. To go further south than that, you need to load your car onto a ferry or drive through Argentina. Our names were on the list, but the boat had been held up because of the storms, so it would not be there. We could wait until Sunday and hope that there would be enough room on the boat for the people who had reservations that day and the day before, or we could drive through Argentina. We chose the later.

After lunch at Chaiten’s only restaurant, we loaded up on food at the one grocery store in town and headed back, stopping once again at the hot springs for an afternoon dip. We arrived back in camp to find out that each of Diego’s boys had caught a fish, one of which was about three feet long. Two of them were enough dinner for the 14 of us.

Saturday morning I got up early with my mother and father and drove back to Chaiten. As it had been too cloudy to actually see the volcano the day before, we were hoping that the early morning would give us the gap in the clouds we were hoping for. No such luck. We tried to fill up the gas tank in Chaiten, but the power was out, a common conundrum, and the generator was only strong enough to pump gas from the diesel tank, not from the deeper unleaded gas tanks.

We drove back to camp, loaded the car, and headed back toward Argentina. Again the border cross was simple and uneventful, and we spent the night at a campground in Esquel.

Sunday morning we drove north, stopping again in San Carlos de Bariloche for ice cream, and crossed back into Chile. At all previous crossings we had never had to unload the top of the car. Usually, the guys poke around for a minute inside the car and check what is convenient and let us go. A family with five kids doesn’t exactly look like the drug running type. But at this border station, it was a different story. We were the last car to cross the border before it closed for the night. Maybe this caused them to be more thorough, or maybe that border cross is always more thorough, but we had to take all of the bags out of the car and unload the roof rack so that a drug sniffing dog could walk through our stuff. I unloaded the back of the car, and as it was dark, I conveniently left Neelam’s peacock feathers in the car. One of the guards was very interested in a jar of crushed red pepper that my mother had in the cooking trunk. He turned it over and over, making sure that there was no baggie hiding inside the pepper. I guess that is a common trick.

We arrived at Lago Ranco to Diego’s summer home just before eleven pm. We ate a quick dinner and went to bed. Their house, built entirely of wood, was gorgeous. There were three bedrooms upstairs holding a total of seven bunk beds, as well as a huge master bedroom downstairs. The dining room table was solid wood and big enough to seat all fourteen of us.

We spent the next five days sun bathing, playing chess, reading, and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere. At night, Diego would pull down the projector screen and we would watch movies. On Tuesday, a bunch of us girls, took the bikes that they had and rode the twenty kilometers to the river and back. At the river was a ferry on which you could load one car. A motor would then pull you across the river. Apparently, it was cheaper than putting in a bridge. We got home after dark, and let me assure you, it was not easy riding the bikes on dirt roads without light, but we made it home safe.

On Thursday, Diego took out the water skis and we all got a chance to try it. Kalindi went first, and got up after about eight unsuccessful tries. Cambria tried about ten times before giving up. I, with the knee brace on (I tore my ACL and MCL last winter skiing), got up on my third try!

Friday night we packed up the car in the hopes of making an early exit Saturday morning. That night, an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile. Needless to say, we weren’t going anywhere on Saturday.