bye bye Chile.......

We just arrived in Lima this morning, had to say farewell to one of our favorite new countries, but we know we will be back someday. Not too much to report but I figure I would close the Chile chapter in a post so we can focus on Peru.

From Pucon, we ventured out to Parque Nacional Huerquehue (pronounced ´ear-kay-way´) for a 3 day, two night visit. We took the morning bus from Pucon, it was only an hour´s journey, half it down yet another dusty dirt road. The bus was pretty full of hikers heading to the park for a day trip, and along the way we picked up many kids on their way to school in their uniforms. The single person seat in front of us was occupied by a dutch traveler with dirty curly hair and comfortably sleeping with his head rolling about on the seat in front of him. There was a young kid of maybe 5 that was just mortified by this and could not keep his eyes off the wayward traveler. It was quite amusing watching the kid behind his spectacles with a look of shock.

The kids jumped off for school, we really enjoyed the last part of the ride into the park with great views of nearby mountains and volcanoes. We had to hike about a mile into the park with our heavy packs on to reach our refugio. Melanie had a bit of back pain so it was a little difficult but she pulled through like a champion. Refugio Tinquilco was our secluded forest paradise. A beautifully built lodge owned by the boisterous and kind Patricio, and staffed by a mountainous chileano version of Lucille Ball, Ingrid. Ingrid greeted us when we pulled our packs off our sweaty backs and entered the living room area of the well decorated cabin. Old typewriters, paintings, electronics, and photographs lined the walls. Ingrid didn´t speak of word of english, but that didn´t slow her down from talking to us like we were having our hair permed at an 80´s Jersey salon. She is a wildy animated person and the keeper of the refugio. She spends all day, every day, 9 months out of the year (she gets the snowy winter off), cooking and cleaning like a stout Martha Stewart in the woods. They have a great wood fire stove that continuously has a giant kettle of hot water bubbling, and lots of enormous cooking pots and pans for big meals.

She showed us to our room and Melanie rested for a bit before we hit the trails. The popular route for the day trippers is a 3,000ft steep climb up a mountain with a several mile loop trail at the top circling around 3 high altitude lakes. The maps they give for the park are terrible, as well with the overall lack of assistance of the park rangers and information area (we actually didn´t even have a map, they are not available at the park at all, you have to buy one in Pucon). The park doesn´t receive alot of funding despite getting a goog amount of visitors. The trails are poorly marked and apparently hikers getting lost in the woods is not an unusual occurance. We heard all of this from Patricio, I´ll get to his introduction in a bit.

The trail was a butt kicker. Hiking 3 hours straight up can dampen the spirits, but there was rays of sunshiney hope as there were several miradors (lookout points) along the dense forested trail that provided views of the lower volcanic lake near our refugio. At the highest mirador we met some Chileano hikers with a map, we had been jack rabbiting back and forth with along the trail. According to their map, it seemed we were only half way up to the first of the three lakes. I had a feeling that it was incorrect by the amount of time we had hiked and elevation climbed, but it was hard to see the top as the steep trees were blocking the view. The Chileanos opted to head back, I sweetly convinced Melanie through her curses and gritting teeth that we were close, and she agreed to 30 minutes more at the very max. 20 minutes later we arrived to Lago Chico.

The lake was still and stunning. The quiet surrounding the lake and high rocky gorge was deafening. The gorge sprouted up over the edge of the lake like a giant ugly andean potato dropped from the sky. The beat in our feet and rumble in our bellies told us it was enough for the day and headed back home, hiking while the sun started to go down and hoping our knees wouldn´t give out. We happen to witness an ant carrying a dead scorpion, witness the photo!

We made a nice simple meal from the food we hiked in. We were to later find out that Ingrid was upset (fake upset, not genuine upset) for bringing our own food to cook because she wanted to cook for us. Next time, and there will be a next time, we will have ingrid cook for us and not hike 3 days worth of food into the park. Later in the evening we finally met Patricio briefly before going to bed. We had some trouble with his email, as we thought he never responded to our inquiry but it turns out his email had been acting wonky. He thanked us for being persistent and went to bed. Melanie and I had an epic game of dominoes, only Melanie doesn´t really care about games so I was left to scream about it´s insanity (or my own) by myself.

Looks like this post is going to be a little longer than anticipated, oh well, I´m sure we will all get over it.

The next morning we had a breakfast along with strong coffee before venturing out to our hike. Patricio caught up with us on the sheep filled lawn before we embarked. We were going to climb up Mt. Sebastian, or at least go as far as we could, it being the biggest mountain in the area and all. He warned us about the bad marking of trail signs, a person died on the same trail the previous month for underestimating the amount of time it would take and trying to hike down in the dark. Apparently he has been arguing with the rangers for years, they had once posted a sign about a hike to the hot springs in the park being a 3 hour hike, when in actuality it was closer to a 7 hour hike each way. Many people got stuck in the woods without food and shelter, Patricio ended up cutting down the sign.

This Mt. Sebastian trail was barely used, especially in comparison to the lakes trail. It was overgrown with a variety of bamboo that isn´t hollow in the inside and is great to use for buildings. This was a much steeper hike, and the great views didn´t come until we reached a high point clearing, and we had a clear line of sight to the Villaricca volcano which was covered with snow and is where people ski in the winter. Off the trail in the woods we found a set of chairs and a small table carved by a chainsaw. Nice place to picnic and take a rest. There were many arrucanyo (not sure if this is spelled correctly) trees that had many medevil looking spikes and were very cool to look at. You can see Melanie trying to eat one of the branches in the photos, I had to tackle her to keep her away, she was hungry.

Back at the refugio we met a girl from Maine who´s accent made her sound european (I thought she kinda sounded like Dorothy from the wizard of oz, Melanie didn´t hear it). Patricio made us one of his legendary Pisco sours and joined us for cocktail hour. He opened a bottle of wine, then forced Melanie and I to drink straight pisco, a very unexpected event on our last night there. Lot´s of good conversation into the quiet night, the nearby cows didn´t even keep us awake. Did I mention there was tons of cows along the trail?

note - The Bull in the photos is not from Huerquehue, but from the bumpy bike ride. It was right in front of us and we had a brief freak out hoping we didn´t have to hone our matador skills.
Ingrid was in tears as we left, we really wanted to take her with us. She knew one of the fews things we knew how tos say was ¨hola¨, and she would say it to us after being gone for only a minute. Then she would go about the act of talking to herself and making herself laugh while rolling big sheets of dough for bread and meticulously cleaning the wood fire stove.

We took a brief swim in the lake via Patrico´s private trail to the only beach on lake Tinquilco. Back in Pucon we took is easy and tried to hit the sack early for the early flight back to Santiago. Nothing too new to report on the cuisine, I guess I did have some ravioli´s stuffed with apples and blue cheese in a pesto cream sauce. I was told about an atlantic krill empanada which was the reason we tried the restaurant with the ravioli´s, but the empanada was made with a whole wheat dough which didn´t blend well with the rich krill and cheese. Should have brought the tapitio for that meal.

Back in Santiago we were picked up by Joce, our saviour, again from the airport. The four of us (Saulito was with us) went to the really old sky tram thingabob, you know, those things they have at amusement parks that slowly carry you across the park and enable a great view? Yup, just like that, only it´s way up above the city and you can see for miles. Saul was mesmerized, he was so busy staring he would blindly bite his giant cookie.

The following day Melanie and I got another good walk around the city, stopping at the big library, Santa Lucia, and got to visit a cafe con piernas. That night I made a typical Tony meal for Joce, Ari, and thier two friends. Coconut green curry with veggies, spicy fat noodles with egg and peanuts, buttery garlic mushrooms, coconut butternut squash soup, and Joce talked me into cooking baby octopus for the first time.

We went to bed and watched 24, did I mention Melanie and I are now hooked on this tv show? A great way to spend time in between Peru planning and packing.

On our last night in Santiago, Ari took us out to a really good meal at the best Indian restaurant in town. We hadn´t had Indian food in over a month and were dying to sink our teeth into some spicy Indian goodness. I got to have Indian style conger, which would be my last conger dish for hopefully not too long. I do love that fish-eel. Our hosts had really been wonderful, and they really made it easy to have as a home base in between locations with such great hospitality. We love Chile, if you didn´t already guess.

We flew into Lima this morning, and we yet to have any concrete plans. We know what we want to do, basically two weeks at a beach up north and two weeks around Cuzco and Machhu Pichhuu. The gist of our conundrum is that the better time to go to Cuzco would be at the end of our trip because there would be less rain. On the other hand, it would be much nicer to end our trip with two weeks at the beach. Thats the gist, there are other little details that don´t seem like much but do add up. Melanie just became sick as of yesterday, her throat is sore and feels pretty down. Taking a bus or flying to an extremely high altitude somewhere is not sounding good. Hopefully we will know more by tomorrow, and be assured that I will have heapfuls of fish in my belly, as the cuisine portion of this trip is about to summit. First meal today, which seemed like a touristy place and was not expecting much more than nutrients, had some great shrimp risotto with marinated red onions and pepers on top. Melanie had some spicy lentils and basmati rice cooked in raisins and arabic spices, yummy. Tommorrow we go ceviching!

Hope all is well back home

T&M inc.