The Lake District - 2

Now driving our tiny but peppy Peugot, we lurched through the Chilean Lake District (Richard learned once again that you must push in the clutch while changing gears).

Some moments en route:

The well publicized stilt houses of Chiloe – with their easter egg colours

Liz and Dick discover a food inhibition! -- a bowl of stewed minnows with garlic sounded to be to our taste – but as Liz tactfully described it “too many eyeballs”.

A monstrous sized yoke of oxen – wonderfully noble beasts. It’s sad to see them passing in favour of a tractor.

We had a fun lunch in Castro at Octavios. Lovely water front location, warm staff and solid basic regional food. Liz finally had Curanto – a stew of fish, mussels, chicken, sausage, smoked pork hock and two kinds of meat filled dumplings. It was OK – but we prefer our fowl, fish, pork and crustaceans separately – but it is a very showy dish.

Richard had a simple dish – a huge slab of poached salmon, covered in fried onions, covered in a vegetable puree and surrounded with French fries (wonderful ones). In case you are more than peckish, they offer the option of 2 fried eggs laid on top – no kidding.

This is lovingly well prepared food with clean flavours, but it is very much designed for someone who is going to leave the table and brave the south Pacific for 10 days catching crabs from frigid water!

But we’d go back to Octavio – it was honest food based on great ingredients – we’d just split one dish between the two of us.

A delightful side benefit to our Octavio visit. The 2 couples at the next table were from England and Winnipeg respectively. There were traveling with a guide as we did in Peru. Paulina is 30 years old and learned English by winning a student exchange scholarship when she was 15. She chose “somewhere where they have snow at Christmas” – they sent her to North Dakota!

We’ve become fascinated by student exchange programs. They are low profile, but the number of people in the travel business in South America who got their inspiration from a student exchange is amazing (6 of 10 of the guides we’ve met).

It’s a low cost, simple program that probably does more for world peace than anything George Bush paid Halliburton to do….or not do.

For scheduling reasons we needed to pause a day. Went to Puerto Varas – expecting to relax and vegetate. Instead had much fun. Liz found us a great hotel – always send Liz in to book. They loved her so much that they upgraded us to a two floor suite.

Here in the south of Chile we found a terrific Mexican restaurant/bar. After too many chips, nachos, salsa, etc we retired to the hotel to try to find the volcano. Puerto Varas is famous for the view across the lake of a large snow covered volcano. But no volcano was to be seen (see view from our hotel window below). We decided the volcano must be around the corner of the lake and went to bed.

In the morning we awoke to this – our very own Mount Fuji!

We literally spent the day watching the light change around it, as shown in the pictures below.

There are actually 2 volcanoes overlooking the lake and a bunch of parasitic cones. The whole area is like a very undeveloped Muskoka (north of Toronto), but with volcanoes!

As we write we’re almost up to date. We’re in Villarrica on Lago Villarrica, one of the burgeoning resort towns, growing to serve the expanding Chilean middle class. Again, it looks like Muskoka 50 years ago, but with the obligatory snow capped volcanoes looming over the lake. Staying in a deluxe cottage compound run by two American ex-pats from Montana-wonderful people who are making our stay perfection by serving Mexican food in their dining room. Tomorrow a small plane ride to peer into the volcano caldera and a boat ride down the gentle rapids (we’re assured the rapids are gentle)

We're here for 5 days, then off to Easter Island and then home.

It seems we just left Toronto. Time has flown by. We have met so many interesting people-just today the large group in the hotel are from Jimmy Carter’s “Habitat For Humanity” …they are down here building homes for local people. When we travel to Europe we meet mirrors of ourselves-foodies, cultural visit collectors, Europhiles. South America has been very different. Our travel encounters are people who have and who do more.

Comments

[wayne]

Still in awe over your itinerary, meals and WRITING!

Funny thing. Saw the towel animal trick recently in a Carnivas cruise spot.

Note new email.

Love

[marta]

Thanks for posting a link to your blog on Slow Travel. I really love your photos. It is great to see the Lake district when it isn't overcast. We were there in Nov 2003 and didn't get a chance to see much sun. It is beautiful. And the seafood!

We also stayed in Villarica so I'm looking forward to hearing more about your time in the area.

Happy travels!

[Jayne]

All I can say is WOW! Following your travels and living vicariously through you is fun... but I wish I could see all these places too. Miss ya Liz! Can't wait to see you when you get home!