Journal... Part 2

Villarrica/Parque Nacional Huerquehue

Wed, Feb 16

Last Thursday morning I went to  Huerquehue National park, up in the Andes about an hour above Pucón.  The entrance is at 780 m. on a large lake-filled glacial valley with about a km. of valley floor between the lake and the valley head, where a steep trail climbs up to 1340 m. and circles three high lakes.  I got there by bus around 10:00 and, since the sign said that the walk to the lakes and back would take about 5.5 hours or so, and the bus back to Pucon didn’t leave until 6:00, I wandered around some and made reservations at a family hostal for the next night before starting the climb.  Mistake.  The trail to the top was pretty rough, climbing a little over 2000 feet in about 4 miles, leveling out (more or less) for the circuit around the lakes, then climbing another 1000 feet or so to return to the top of the crest where the trail continued back down.  Took me about 9 hours to do the full 17 km., and I was pretty exhausted when I got back down.  Needless to say, the bus had left, but there was room at the hostal...actually a family home.. so I stayed the night.  After downing 2 liters of water, I revived somewhat, and had a nice meal of trout and salad with a bottle of wine, and made it a day.

Up at the 3 lakes in Huerquehue

In spite of the hard climb... or more correctly my poor condition (didn’t seem to take 9 hours for the other folks), the high lakes were beautiful, with good sized trout rising violently to dragon fly nymphs in the shallows, reflections of the high crags in the water, great forests including the remarkable “monkey-puzzle tree,” and generally the beauty of high mountains.  Worth the climb, but I didn’t do it again.





Next day I returned to Villarrica, got my stuff, and went back.  The family I was staying with had come to the valley in 1945, or at least the grandparents of Don Fudor Castillo, the current patriarch, had.  They settled there, claimed the land under the Chilean version of the Homestead Act, and settled down; running cattle and sheep in the high mountain pastures in summer and bringing them down in fall, planting potatoes and a garden, and so on.  In ’67 the head of the valley and lakes, everything except the sq. km or so that they had homesteaded, became the national park, and sometime later a road came in.

By the mid 80’s Chilean tourists started coming, and the family gradually opened a camping area, built a little camping store, the present house, and a small 4 table restaurant.  The house, build on piers overlooking the valley and lake, is all native wood, with 3 small bedrooms, a kitchen, small living room, and large porch.  My room, which I shared first with a young Chilean music student and then with a 20-something English tour guide, was small, but high ceilinged and pleasant, with the usual two twin beds, an open closet, two hooks for hanging clothes and a bedside table.  The kitchen, relatively large in comparison to the rest of the house, included a cabinet and sink, and in the center of the room, a large handsome wood burning range.  There Doris, niece of Don Fundor, was chief cook and house keeper, and there she made home-made bread and “kuken” daily in the wood fired oven.  The oldest son,  Fundor, 21, married with a son, also named Fundor, ran the restaurant, while the second son, Beto, 14, ran the tiendita.  Fundor Jr. Had cooked my trout the first night, and had shared a little of my bottle of wine, and we hit it off well.  He had been to college/technical school where he had completed an accounting degree, and was also half way through a course in eco-toursimo.  The first night he pointed out a large animal, beaver like, swimming across the lake, and when I didn’t know what it was he ran to get his Xeroxed copy of Mammals of Chile and we had a little natural history lesson, talked fishing, and so on.  Nice Kid.

The house where I stayed in Huerquehue

Sat., the first full day I was there after returning from Villarrica, I had breakfast outside on the deck, overlooking the lake, with warm fresh home made bread, thick local cheese.... white, soft in the middle, a little like Munster but with holes like Swiss....  coffee, butter and jam.  And since it was cloudy and over cast with steam coming off the water, I went down to fly cast off the dock.  Great fishing, clear water, no fish.  At almuerso, Fundor Jr. offered me the usual choices:  churrasco, trout, fired potatoes, completos  (hot dogs with everything) or.... if I wanted it... some of the family meal: Casuela de vacuna.  I had been smelling the rich garlic aroma coming out of the cook-pot all morning, so the choice was simple, and I arranged to eat whatever the family was eating for almuerso for as long as I stayed.  The casuela was bony beef chunks boiled with garlic, and finished with a bit of pasta and boiling potatoes, with chopped chives and cilantro sprinkled on top. It was served in a soup bowl with a plate on the side from which to eat the meat and potato, while you ate the rest of the soup with a soup spoon, accompanied by fresh bread, lettuce and tomatoes with salt and lemon juice (and my pepper!).  The next day’s meal followed the same pattern, except with chicken, and a little onion instead of garlic, and with a piece of corn on the cob along side the potato.  Day three was the same basic preparation, meat and potatoes in a clear broth, but this time the meat was lamb surtido...mixed parts, some bony pieces of the head, spine, tongue and liver, cooked with a little white wine and onions.  Everything, in short, that wouldn’t be part of that night’s asado barbecue)... to which I was invited.

 Making bread by the wood stove

By about 5:00, after my afternoon nap, the fire for the asado was well underway.  They use a half barrel on legs for the fire box, and on each end is a vertical iron bar with three cross-pieces.     |

The lamb had been cut into large pieces.. the two rib halves, two legs, etc, and salted, and was skewered on 6 foot long sword like skewers. While the fire was still flaming pretty strongly, the meat-laden skewers were laid across the crosses above the fire.  The asadero, in this case Don Fundor, stood at one end more or less constantly turning the meat, moving it from upper to lower arms of the crosses.  The melted lamb fat continuously bathed the outside and ran off into the fire in rivulets, and the meat began to acquire a light brown crust.  The entire cooking took only 30 to 45 minutes, during which we drank beer and a half bottle of pisco I contributed, and then the skewers were taken off and held vertically while each of the men cut his own chunk from the roasted meat.  As the honored (if somewhat unanticipated) guest, I cut the first chunk, a nice piece of shoulder, which went on to a plate with the ubiquitous boiled potatoes, sliced tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. ...and wine. 

Don Funor preparing the asado

The men tended to stand around the upright skewers, drinking and eating with their hands, cutting off choice pieces for themselves and each other, while the women and children (and guest) sat at a picnic table.  I had suggested that I might help with the wine, and contributed couple of bottles, and naturally, lots more wine appeared., and the wine drinking continued late into the night.  As you can imagine, I drank my share, but kept a bit soberer than the rest (...well drunker than some, but less than others) as the conversation drifted from one’s preferred beer and whisky, to discussions of Mapuche herbal medicine, to international politics and “just who were these Shiites, and Sunni and Kurds in Iraq       

Los Asaderos

Great evening.  Nice people. In fact, I’m struck by how courteous, gentle and affectionate the Chileans are.  Perhaps the first things one notices are the abundant and enthusiastic public displays that seem to take place on park benches, bus doorways and street corners.   But more than that, people seem continuously affectionate.  Men pat their children and caress their wives at the dinner table, couples hold hands, and of course, the kiss on the cheek is obligatory when geeting or parting, even with new gringo acquaintances.  One afternoon in the park I was sitting on the terrace when the two brothers, Fundor and Beto came running up the steep path and stairs from the restaurant to the house, burst intro the kitchen and embraced their sister in a boisterous three-way hug.  Tuned out to be her birthday and they had just remembered and raced to see who could hug her first.  

But apart from the obvious affection, people are just kind and courteous.  They say “ graicas” to the driver when leaving a bus, and he replies “que le vaya bien.”  People stop for pedestrians at intersections, young men give up bus seats for old people and women with babies, and the language is innocent of  the many forms of “chingar” and other vulgarity... something pretty improbable to one with Mexican experience.

Swimming off the dock

So... the days at Huerquehue became a pleasant routine:  a walk or row around the lake in the AM. Back for almuerso at 1:30 or 2:00, a nap, a swim, a bit of wine on the deck, cena around dark, and bed around 10:00.  The fishing was beautiful, although unproductive.  One AM Fundor and his sister Alejandra took me out in the row boat so I could fly fish, and thought I had no hits, we all had a very pleasant time.  Another afternoon, one of the young men vacationing with his girl friend took me out with him.  He works as a fly fishing guide at one of the fly-fishing resorts where clients pay $4,200 (US) a week for their stays.  He is a genuine fly fishing aficionado, ties his own flies, and had fished since he was a boy.   Although it is the hottest part of summer (February = August) when the fish go deep to avoid the warm surface water, and the likelihood of catching trout was slim, he had noticed a few rising in the very late evening, and invited me to accompany him.  We caught nothing, but had an interesting talk about fishing and guiding.  He speaks limited English (but knows all the fishing vocabulary), and was interesting in knowing  more about his clients; a bit more than he had felt comfortable asking.  And naturally, I was interested in his experiences a guide, so we had a very interesting conversation.  When we got back, I invited him for a bottle of wine, and we ended up sitting around in the restaurant with him and his chica, Fundor Jr., Beto, Michael, my English room mate, and another 5 or 6 Chilean students on vacation.

Funor Jr. and Alita, who took me fishing

Michael is a 24-26 year old from the south of England who works as a tour guide for an English company.  His clients, English people who want to travel in Chile but aren’t up to the language, travel with him by public transportation and stay in hostels in the $15-$20 a night range, but he takes care of all the arrangements, pays the bills, translates, and so on.  The English tour company is his official employer, so there is no problem with working in foreign countries, and he moves with the seasons, traveling in the Andean countries and Mexico with the “high seasons.”   Good company, and a mine of travel experience.  We're going to be back in Santiago at about the same time in March, and plan to get together again for dinner.

So..... another good week, and one especially rich in new acquaintances; the ones I’ve written about and others: the Chilean agronomist who lives and works in Israel perfecting hard tomatoes, the ex-policewoman and now plastic surgeon’s technician with dietary advice for maintaining one’s youthful appearance, the two English lesbians of a certain age, and the usual run of young Europeans and Chileans that turn up everywhere with backpacks and tales of their travels in simultaneous combinations of English/ Spanish/ German/French in which everyone manages to communicate.

Tomorrow I’m off to Puerto Montt to reserve passage of a boat to points south, Punta Arenas and Puerto Natal, and to see the island of Chiloe.

Puerto Montt  2/19

The five hour bus ride to Puerto Montt from Villarrica was uneventful, in that the bus didn’t leave me anywhere and the flat tire we stopped to fix seemed to have been a false alarm.  The countryside continues to look like Washington or Oregon, with a mix of forest and cultivated areas... mostly apples and wheat.  About 20 minutes before arriving in Puerto Montt, the bus passed through Puerto Varas, a strikingly beautiful tourist town.  It’s situated on a huge fresh water lake with a classic volcano rising in the background to the NE.  To the East are snow covered Andean crags and the town is the expected Chilean-Bavarian summer resort.

Puerto Montt waterfront

Puerto Montt, on the other hand, is a bit grubby.  It’s the northern terminus of the carretera Austral, the gravel road that runs a good way down toward Tierra del Fuego, and also for the ferries that run down to Puerto Natal.  It’s also a fishing port and general supply point for everything south...the last city of any size with road connection to the rest of the world.  The rest of Chile is supplied by ship or via Argentina over the Andes.  My hostal is between the fishing port and the town center in a slightly seedy neighborhood of hostales, restaurants, and bars.  Further north is the actual port, situated in a relatively narrow river mouth, and crowded with ferries, fishing boats and water taxis.  Along the coastal road is a 100 yard stretch of artisan and souvenir shops, selling mostly sweaters... the dominant local handicraft.  Buying a sweater here or on Chiloe Island was part of the plan, and after a search I found pretty much what I wanted.  They are hand knit of natural wool and are quite nice, though since they don’t come in numbered sizes, finding the style and colors I wanted in my size was something of an ordeal.  I ended up with a moderately heavy grey, black and beige one with a 2 button neck and collar.  Definitely an outside sweater, to be worn under my wind shell as I go further south.

Fish Market at Puerto Montt

Which (going south) is the plan. The ferry run, which leaves on Mondays and arrives on Thursdays is booked for the next two trips, but I have reservations for March 8 and they are going to email me if anything comes up for Feb 28.  The accommodations range from 2 person AAA cabins at over $1000 US, per person, down to the below decks and windowless dormitorio at around $325.  I’m trying for something in the middle, a four bunk AA or A cabin with bath and a porthole. Meals are included... cafeteria style but evidently not bad, and the bar prices are said to be “moderate.”  There are supposed to be inside and outside public areas on deck, where I assume I’ll spend most of the days watching the islands go by.  From everything I’ve heard and from the map, it should be a lot like the interior passage to Alaska but with penguins instead of killer whales.


Dried and smoked shellfish at the market

Between now and then I’m going back to Puerto Varas for a day, and then on to Chiloe island, which in many ways was the destination for this trip.  At some time in my childhood I read a National Geo article on Chiloe, and thought I’d like to go.  Settled by Galicians and relatively isolated form the rest of Chile, it has a reputation as a place of mythical creatures and rural fishing communities.  And now, of course, of tourism.  Still, it’s likely to be pretty low impact tourism, with lots of sea front hostales and sea food restaurants. Unfortunately, Chile is experiencing an epidemic of shellfish-borne cholera, and raw sea food is a no-no, but there’s still plenty of good fish and cooked stuff.  Yesterday I had “locos” for almuerso.  They are an abalone-like shellfish that provides a chunk of scallop or abalone like muscle meat about the size of a small filet mignon... say 3 ounces.  My serving was three of these, topped by mayo, along with lettuce, tomato and potato salad.... and white wine.  One of the more expensive menu items at 4,000 pesos ($7), and with wine about $10.... about the level of  a good burger and a couple of beers.  I ate in a puesto, a 3 or 4 table restaurant in the middle of the fish market, recommended by my hostal.  Lots of hustle and bustle and soliciting of customers as they walk by, but it’s pretty clear that you’re getting fresh seafood.  Today I ate at another such place, a bit up scale from the first in that it is not directly in the fish market, but above it.  Looks like the inside of a particularly nice log cabin, five tables, and a small cooking area, all overlooking the harbor.  They have, of all things, a webcam, and you can see it at www.chilotitomarino.cl along with the rest of Puerto Montt, the menu, and recipes.  Pretty upscale for a 5-table fish-market restaurant!  Today I had congrio a la plancha, a local fish a bit like monk fish, grilled with salad and wine.  Very nice.  

The restaurant at Puerto Montt, with the Navimag ship in the background.

So..... that’s about it for this evening.  Puerto Montt has little to recommend it except sea food, but I don’t plan to spend much time here.  Another couple of nights and then off to Chiloe.



Link to Part 3