The Lake District

Our adventure level has definitely picked up since we left Santiago. We arrived in Temuco after a 9 hour bus ride. We found the town was a little old and run-down, but after a couple of hours it seemed to grow on us. The next morning we went to Avis to rent the car. We only put Nick´s name on to drive since I do not like driving in places I do not know, but when we got to the car we realized it was manuel. It just so happens both of us are NOT experts when it comes to standard vehicles. Nick asked if they had an automatic, but the lady informed us all they have in Chile is standards. Four blocks down the road Nick decided we better go back and add my name to the car because things weren´t working out so well with him behind the wheel. So I was named the official driver for this trip. Everything was going pretty good until we started on the less beaten path. As you can see in the pictures our car is not made for all terrains! The day ended up going pretty well though. We only about got stuck twice, and we got to drive through a really cool tunnel. We stayed the night in Melipeuco, and the next morning headed out again towards a popular town called Pucon. On this journey we got to drive around lakes and through a really nice valley with a village where people still ride horses at the main mode of transportation. They also use wagons with wooden wheels pulled by their cattle to haul things. Many people tried to hitch a ride with us through that valley, but for their safety I thought they probably wouldn´t want a ride with me driving. Everything went really well except two places in the road. One we were going up a steep narrow road when we met a truck coming down. I ended up killing the car, and I couldn´t get it up the hill. The truck driver was super nice though and drove the car up the hill for us. The second spot was a long, narrow, winding hill where we met a huge logging truck coming down. Thank goodness I figured out 1st gear by that point, because I had to back down until I got to a spot wide enough for the truck to fit around me and then start going back up the hill. It was nerve racking, but it all worked out. We returned the car with our fingers crossed that Avis did not see how bad the undercarriage looked after this trip. She never even glanced under the car though.
Now we are staying in Pucon, which is a very nice town. It is definitely the richest town we have been in so far. It looks just like a little place in Colorado that tailors to tourism with its beautiful wooden buildings and the many many different shops you can book adventures with.
This is the worst bridge we seen on our trip, but there were many more we crossed that were just a level or two better than this one.

Nick driving in circles practicing with the clutch.

Volcano Llaima-This is the volcano that just erupted 2 months ago. The park is still closed, so we couldn´t go too much closer.

A lava field from an eruption in 1957.

The cool tunnel that we drove through. It ended up being a little over 3 miles long!

We have decided this tree must be a mixture between an evergreen and a palm tree. It grew in abundance in one section of our trip.

The branches of the tree.

The bark of the tree.

View down the valley.

One of the lakes we drove by.

Mountain river with extremely cold water.

The car was getting pretty dirty towards the end of the adventure.

A view of a different volcano called Volcan Villarica from Pucon. We are going to try to climb the volcano tomorrow if we can find a tour guide in our price range. If you look close you can see the smoke coming out of the top.

Good-Bye Santiago

Today is our last day in Santiago. Tomorrow we head out to Temuco, which is 7 hours south of here. We plan to rent a car there and drive around the Lake District. It is supposed to be extremely beautiful. We will soon find out!!
This is my favorite statue in Santiago. It is a monument for the indigenous people of the area.

Juan, our doorman. He was the nicest man. He gave us many gifts to remember him by.

To The Beach

This week we went to Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, which are about 70 miles from Santiago. Valparaiso used to be a major port before the Panama Canal was built, but since that time it has become quite poor. But don’t get me wrong you can see in the picture they still have some business happening there. When the port was booming they built a town 5 miles north of Valparaiso called Vina del Mar to be their resort town. Today Vina del Mar still offers beaches and a tourist destination, while Valparaiso is mainly a port town with a ton of history.
The view from a hill in Vina del Mar

This is a clock made of flowers native to the area. We are not quite sure what was so popular about this clock, but every time we walked by it there was a crowd of people taking pictures.

A picture of Vina del Mar and the “river” that runs through it. The only thing is that sand in the picture blocks the river from the ocean so it is more like a lake since it has no where to run.

The Pacific Ocean here still has the same characteristics as the Pacific Ocean in Mexico or the U.S. It has big rocks and the water is very cold. The first day we went to the beach there were not many waves, but we could watch the kids and see there was a strong undertow. The second day the waves were a lot stronger. On this day people kept finding jellyfish in the water. They would catch the jellyfish using a towel (and later a net), carry it on the beach, 100 people would gather around to see it, and then they would bury it in the sand. This happened at least 5 times in the 2 hours we were at the beach. The jellyfish were pretty big too, about 12 inches in diameter.

This is the Bay of Valparaiso. As you can see it is still quite busy. I would hate to see how busy it was before the Panama Canal.

They have many houses with character in Valparaiso.

Between Valparaiso and Santiago lies the Casablanca Valley where many vineyards are located. This is just a portion of the valley covered in rows of grapes.

Mendoza, Argentina

We spent four days in Mendoza, and it was really nice. It was a great change of pace, scenery, and price (Argentina is 3x cheaper than Chile) compared to Santiago. Mendoza has a population of 110,00, so it has a small town feel. After a 6-hour bus ride, and an additional 2.5 hours going through the border we arrived in the town. The bus ride was beautiful with 90% of it going through the Andes. Once we entered the city limits it was easy to see that America has more influence over Argentina. We saw a Microtel Inn and Suites, many different old American cars, and good ol’ Wal-Mart. The hostel we stayed at was an old colonial house, so it was kind of surreal to wake up early in the morning and have total quietness outside, but then a horse trotting by would break the silence. It is definitely not the majority, but many people there still use a horse and cart to do their business around town. We walked around most of the town’s central and at 2:00 in the afternoon people just close up their shops and take a lunch until 5:00pm. Every business seemed to do this except the cafes. It seems that most people use this time to exercise, since we seen many gyms and the park was full of people running, swimming, biking, canoeing, playing tennis, and more. The park was extremely nice with giant trees, a lake in the middle, and an amazing view of the mountains.
The major business of Mendoza is vineyards. On the third day we went on a winery tour. We toured two wineries, an olive oil factory, and a liquor/chocolate factory. Our favorite part was the tastings; the talking part could get kind of boring. The wineries were beautiful though. Our favorite was an organic winery that is ran by a family. There are 1500 wineries in Argentina, but only 8 are organic. They said that people in Argentina do not understand the benefits of organic and just see that it costs more, so this is why 90% of the winery’s production is exported to other countries.
Here are some pictures:
Route 60 to Mendoza. It was kind of scary at times how close the bus was to the edge.

We made it to the Argentina border crossing. It was a long process since approximately 6 buses were in front of us. All of us had to get off when it was our turn, have our passport stamped, get back on the bus for a while, get off the bus again and have the guards look in our bag, and then we were done.

Beautiful lake right outside the Argentina border.

Rainy mountains outside Mendoza

Our hostel

Downtown Mendoza

Parque San Martin. This is where so many people were exercising. We think the big building is like a country club.

The basement of a winery with the huge barrels where we had a wine tasting, but the picture didn´t come out too well.

Many, many wine bottles

Grapes on the vine at the organic winery

The windy road back to Santiago. The sad thing is we had already gone down 4 or 5 tiers before I took the picture. This part of the road made Nick car sick.

Spanish classes finished/It sprinkled!!!

We have officially completed our 3 weeks at the Spanish school. I have to admit we are not fluent yet, but we do feel more comfortable trying to communicate.
Me with one of our teachers on the last day of class. He was taking us for a field trip to celebrate our last day of class. The field trip consisted of buying beers at the store and drinking them while we walked to his house. An interesting note here is you are able to go to the store and open a six-pack of beer and take what you want...one beer, two beers whatever. You do not have to buy the whole six-pack.

It finally sprinkled in Santiago!!!! This morning a few drops of rain fell from the sky. It was incredible. This is the leaves outside our window. You can see all the dust built up on them. Maybe I will only sweep a half of a pound of dirt out of the house this week, instead of a pound!

Our First Excursion!!

I am sorry it has been so long since the last blog. We have been so busy with school this past week; we have not had much time for adventure. School is going really well though, and I think our Spanish has improved considerably already…at least in our heads. We did manage to get out of the city for our first excursion since we have been here this weekend. We went to a valley in the mountains called Cajón del Maipo about 2 hours east of Santiago. There are approximately 20 small villages along this valley, and one is called Baños Morelas where there is a national park. It was a great trip, which included: riding a real Chilean bus, driving along steep cliffs, watching a farmer plant his field with a horse and plow, seeing different houses from small log cabins to shacks, hiking 16km, and seeing our first glacier up close.

Nick is studying so hard!!

This is our school, where we have spent all week.

The beginning of the trail in the national park at Baños Morelas.

That is the glacier up ahead...I know you think it is just piles of snow on a mountain but just wait.

Us on the trail.

Can you make out the glacier now?

On the way to the glacier there are natural hot springs where you can swim.

That is the glacier!! Actually it is almost the whole side of the mountain. It has been there for 20,000 years, and is responsible for making the whole valley we just walked up.

Closer picture of the mouth and the stream of water coming out of it. It would be bad if there was an earthquake right now!!

Nick in front of the cave. If you stand right by the mouth it is like air conditioning!

Cute yellow flowers along the trail...all of them have one little red dot on them.

Me heading back down the trail.

This is the little town of Baños Morelas. It is really cute with really nice people, homemade empanadas, and a pool.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!! I hope 2008 has started out great for all!

Crappy picture of fireworks outside the window of our apartment, but you get the idea. This was a show off the cerro San Cristobal, but they had another round of fireworks from the tower in the middle of town. We were not brave enough to go find a place to see them since 350,000 people were there...too many people!



Okay, so we took another trip up this hill we are either talking about or walking up. This time we were on a mission to find the other swimming pool. This is a museum garden they have on the hill that they have made different sections representing the different regions of Chile. In this representation it offers a great view over the city.

Us looking cute!


Some hazy snow-capped mountains on our way up the hill. We did eventually find the pool, but it was built in such a way that we could not see it. It was also interesting climbing the hill in the morning because there was so much activity. There were many bikers going for a morning ride, a yoga class going on in the museum gardens, and a dance aerobics class going by the pool. It was great to see so much participation and activities on this beautiful hill.


This is a sculpture at the modern art park by our house.


And this is another.