Week 2: Pucón & Puerto Varas

Greetings!

We moved on from Pucón yesterday and are now staying just outside Puerto Varas.

I mentioned last time that Pucón reminded me of a low-end Crested Butte.  After spending 5 days in the Pucón area – and now two weeks in Chile – I think that I viewed Pucón and Chile in general in a certain way only because it seems to have resisted the tendency you see in the US and in Europe to over-luxuriate.  None of the streets, homes, shops, hotels, or restaurants bear the hallmarks of modern, luxurious construction; instead, almost everything is built simply and efficiently.  I admit to the need to adjust my perspective.

None of this is to say that Pucón was inexpensive – it definitely was not.  It is very much a tourist town; the price of a standard dinner for 4 was at least as expensive as it would have been in a place like Crested Butte.  We’ve found restaurants to be similarly priced almost everywhere we’ve been.  Fortunately, for several reasons, we have sought out options for lunch and dinner that serve good food for far less.  We also have been cooking a lot.

We had a couple days of cloudy, rainy weather to start off our week in Pucón.  That put a bit of a damper on our outdoor adventure plans but meant that school was in full swing for Cam and Wesley.  Aimee and the boys spent most of a day doing some school work and I got some work done as well.

The main thing that the first couple days of poor weather meant, however, is that we didn’t see the icon of Pucón, Volcán Villarica, until Day 3.  Volcán Villarica is a gigantic, active volcano that absolutely looms over the town and surrounding area.  It’s gigantic and RIGHT THERE when you’re just walking down the street.  Except we didn’t see it at all until we woke up in the morning on Wednesday.  We had just been going about our lives without perceiving this giant volcano right above us.

Volcán Villarica last erupted just three years ago.  It was a big enough eruption that they evacuated the town.  There are signs along every road entering the region that tell you you’re entering a dangerous area.

In between bouts of rain, we hiked a bit on the lower part of the volcano, walked around the neighboring town of Villarica, and played soccer and hide-and-go-seek in a park and neighboring pasture.  When the weather turned and the sun came out, we caught an amateur soccer game in the city stadium and finally got to do our first major, full-day hike of the trip.

Our hike was through Parque Huequehue, about 40 minutes outside Pucón.  We had lunch halfway through on the edge of a beautiful lake.  The boys and I took a dip in our underwear.

 

It ended up being a much bigger hike than we had expected; it was longer and more steep than we would have attempted with the boys had we known better beforehand.  But all four of us ended up completing the entire 15 kilometer hike, which took us up about 3,000 feet.  I should say that Wesley did 14 of the 15 kilometers before finally coming to the end of his rope; I carried him the last bit of the hike. All of us had jello for legs by the time we were finished.

A couple other interesting observations about Chile.  First, the stray dogs.  They’re everywhere.  In town, out in the country, in the mountains, and along the roads.  So many.  One guy followed us along a lake in Caburga, outside of Pucón, and we decided he looked like Rigby’s long-lost Chilean cousin.  

Second, there are what seem to be programs that the country has implemented to create jobs for (mostly younger) Chileans. The two we have noticed so far are parking and gas station attendants.  There are no parking meters; instead, there is a person stationed on every blockthat is responsible for taking payment.  He or she places a receipt on each car when it arrives and then, when you leave, the attendant comes, calculates the elapsed time and takes your fee.

Gas station attendants are not an extinct phenomenon in the US, but they’re still pretty uncommon (do they still have them in New Jersey?).  Here, nobody pumps their own gas.  Each gas station has between one (remote places) and 10+ (heavily populated areas) attendants.  Aimee and I can’t think of any reason why these two jobs exist in Chile other than lingering custom and the creation of jobs.

The day after our hike, we drove South four hours to Puerto Varas.  Puerto Varas is another town on another lake next to another volcano, so we decided to make our first spontaneous adjustment of the trip and moved out of our in-town AirBnB in favor of one about 30 kilometers outside of town on a beautiful, remote farm.  The land we’re on has sheep and pigs and is worked by a husband and wife (Jacqueline and Marcelo) who are quiet but friendly.  They have a shy 5 year-old boy who refuses to tell us his name.

The area West of Puerto Varas (and Puerto Montt) is all rolling hillsides and farmland.  The mountains/volcanoes lay to the East and the Pacific is to the West.  Today (Sunday, as I write), we went for a long drive that took us to the island/archipelago of Chiloé, where we found (1) the most beautiful beach and (2) the most disgusting local cuisine.

The beach was amazing. Again, in the US or Europe, there would be houses or hotels lining the bluffs and people crowding the sand. Here, on Chiloé, there was nothing. The water was freezing, but the weather was perfect and the boys played for hours.

The food was Curanto, the signature dish of the people of Chiloé.  Given that Chile doesn’t have a lot of signature dishes, we sought out a place to give it a try.  It was advertised as a stew of seafood, meat, and vegetables.  Sounds delicious, right?  A bit like a paella?  Nope. It was a dry net-bag of shellfish, meat pieces, and mashed tuber-y stuff wrapped in plastic wrap.  I can still smell it…

 

We will be here on the farm (which is beautiful, as well) until Tuesday.  There’s no WiFi here, so I’m not sure when I’ll get this blog post out.  Tomorrow (Monday), we plan to get some laundry done and make some ferry reservations for our trip down the Carretera Austral, which begins Tuesday.  I hope to find a spot from which I can post all of this.

From Tuesday until January 31, we will be driving one road (the Carretera) South through Patagonia. We plan to get to Puerto Rio Tranquilo before returning North to Puerto Montt for our flight to Punta Arenas.  We will mostly be camping during that time, so there won’t be any blog posts.  We’ll put stuff up on Instragram as much as we can.

We miss all of you and would love to hear from you in the comments.

Love,

Max, Aimee, Cam & Wes