Cuevas, Cabañas y Correr

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So last weekend (Oct 3 - 5), while much of the rest of the program decided to go south toward the desolate beauty of this country (and also towards the cold), four friends and I opted for renting a car and discovering what’s a bit north of Concepción. So on Friday afternoon we set off from Conce, feeling happy to leave the already-gotten-used-to dullness of this city. Well, it’s not so much dull, it’s just that nothing really surprises me anymore (I guess that’s a sign that I really feel like I live here now). It was refreshing to see so much newness just on the car ride itself, in the form of endless lush green fields, small open farms, mountains in the distance, and plenty of animals. I finally was able to see just a sliver of what people told me beforehand of Chile’s beauty. We stopped to take pictures a few times, buy a delicious bread-cheese-avocado concoction, and attempt to ask for directions. But we finally ended up in Chillan, a town below the mountains and full of hot springs. Well at least that’s what we thought…

The only hot springs we were actually able to find were at a resort, and only one out of many of them were functioning because the skiing season is just ending. So we snuck into this very fancy pool, swam in the warm water for a bit, got questioned by the hotel workers, pretended to not know Spanish, then got chased out of the vicinity. All in good fun. Seeing as how we all had to run to our car though, wearing only our swimsuits and the cold, my body didn’t have as much fun. But we soon found a hostel, complete with a pizzeria, free breakfast, a fireplace and comfy beds, all for an amazingly inexpensive 6 bucks. Yes, we thought we’d heard wrong too. The woman who told us this was French, didn’t speak Spanish well and had only been working at the hostel for a month or so. But we asked her multiple times how much it cost and she continued to say the same thing. We dried ourselves out by the fire and ate a colorful meal of pizza, salads, and wine (we found out that the chef was award-winning and French; and we believed it), then headed in for an early night. The next morning we contented ourselves with some home made bread with butter and jam, cereal, tea, the works. Then as we were about to leave, the main worker at the hostel (not the French lady), informed us that the cost of the hostel was actually thirty or forty dollars, which of course, if we had known that previously, we wouldn’t have stayed there. So we left a little more than what we were originally going to pay for to stay and left money for the dinner of the night before (which is what they were making the most money off of anyway), and ran for it. It appears that we did a lot of running away that weekend.

And a bit of driving as well. Next we found ourselves at a beach, with no hope of putting on swimsuits for fear of freezing. I was attracted to the movement of the waves, so I childishly ran back and forth from them while my comrades attempted to nap on the sand. We then drove north along the coast, finally stopping at one of our original destinations, las cuevas. These caves are hidden amongst massive rocks, and are a popular pilgrimage-ish destination because supposedly the Virgin Mary made an appearance here. There is a statue and shrine of her, therefore, within the caves. But before even seeing the caves we were immediately drawn to the rocky hills along the shore, perfect for climbing and seeing brilliant views of the ocean. We climbed all over them like ants, sat on the ones that were the most comfortable and stared off into the distance. We took our time, along with some photographs, and eventually made it back to the caves. But it’s really just one enormous, hollow, black hole carved through a hill made of rock, and the light comes through the openings, giving that space an angelic glow.

We were quite hungry after all the walking and climbing, so we found a tiny fish restaurant in a tiny fishing town. But there was no place for us to sleep, so we had to drive back south to another fishing town called Cobquecura, to rent what is called a cabaña (cabin). Ours consisted of a very small house, complete with a driveway for our car, two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and mini living and dining rooms. Very nice in fact, compared to what other houses in this town seemed to look like. In the morning we got a sense of how big it is (or rather, small) by walking to the top of a hill with a shrine and cross and seeing the fabulous view. We then cooked our OWN breakfast (which felt wonderful. We are quite pampered in Conce and don’t do any of our own cooking), packed our bags, and drove back to the place we now call home.

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