Viña to Temuco

OK, now we're vacationing!

Yesterday Paula, Lola and I left Viña at 7:30am and caught a bus to Santiago. That trip was about 2 hours and then we hopped on a bus to Temuco here in the South of Chile (check out that map down below on the first entry to this blog) for the 8 hour trip south. I listened to the Michael Palin book, Himalayas on the trip (I copied the files of the author reading the book from 7 CDs to my mp3 player, so it's easy to listen to) and had the contrast of his experiences in India and Tibet in my head while having Chile pass by my eyes...

As we rode south Lola got a phonecall from the vet that one of the kittens had been adopted - the smaller one, not the grey one staring into the camera. So that was very good news. If the other doesn't get taken Lola is going to keep it.

South of Santiago we passed through miles and miles of vineyards. Chile is famous for it's wine and this is where all of the grapes are grown (see the rather blurry image from a moving bus...). After a few hours we got past the grapes and into the forests. Just like being in Washington - the forests stretched across the hillsides. And finally as we got further south (remember as you travel south here, you are actually getting farther from the equator) we hit farming and ranch areas with freshly harvested wheat fields and cattle ranches. It was like traveling from California to Manitoba in a single day.

As we rode the bus south a line of volcanos passed to the east. This area of the Andes is very active volcano-wise and we must have passed 6 or 8 during the day. At one point I could see 5 at once and it would be very much like living in Seattle and seeing 5 volcanos ranging from the perfection of Mt. Fuji to the wreck of Mt. St. Helens all along the Cascades. Pretty amazing. From our hotel room here we can see a volcano called Villarica in the distance (see photo).

So now we're in Temuco. It's a commercial center here in the South and probably not worth a stop unless you have a wedding to attend (for us, that'll be tomorrow night). Our hotel is very nice and is famous in town with the taxi drivers for having a Turkish Bath and a Sauna. It's called Tierra del Sur and has a website at www.tierradelsur.cl

Paula and I enjoyed our first day on our own with no family commitments by strolling around town and eating some typical Chilean fare in a restaurant in the market (Paula had a Pastel de Choclo which is a corn casserole with chicken that was baked in an individual dish while I had fried fish a la chileano which turned out to be fish with a tomato and onion salad). The restaurant area in the market is a real adventure around lunch time. Every restaurant has a couple women in aprons outside their doors extolling the advantages of their food over all others. As you walk between all the restaurants (there must have been 25 or 30 small places in the large market) you are accosted good naturedly from all sides. We eventually found a place that looked busy and friendly and popped in.

This afternoon we had a swim in the hotel pool, found out that the Turkish Bath and sauna are for men only- not really sure what's up with that - and generally did a lot of nothing.

I'm writing this from an internet cafe (well, there's not really a cafe - it's a telephone/internet shop where people without phones can make long distance phonecalls or use one of the dozen computers they have available). This is my first stop at one of these stores (previously I was using the family computer in Viña and also tried the computer in the "internet" room at our hotel here in Temuco, but it wasn't up to blogging with pictures...). Amazingly, this place is air conditioned (very nice even at almost 9:00pm when I'm writing this) and there are signs that say, "¿Gracias por no fumar!" - no smoking! People smoke everywhere here, but that'll be the topic of another blog entry...