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Published: June 20th 2008
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The local beer
Reputedly Chile's best Valdivia is a university town founded by and named after Pedro de Valdivia, conquistador and no great friend of the local Mapuche people. Standing at the confluence of three rivers, it has recovered from bearing the brunt of recorded history's most violent earthquake in 1960 to be called the prettiest town in Chile, a title which would never have sprung to mind based on my two days there of rain and gloom.
Perhaps because of the student population, I saw numerous fast food joints, with my first MacDonald's sighting for over a month. On the plus side, there were at least two Chinese restaurants in the town. Valdivia is also home to the Kunstmann brewery, producer of Chile's supposedly best beer. Kunstmann originally started beer manufacture when the town's main brewery was destroyed by the earthquake, and what had begun as brewing for personal use eventually became a business.
It seemed like my hostel was more a student residence that just happened to have a couple of dorms for travellers - the general behaviour of the inhabitants, including producing a pool of vomit just outside of the front door, was certainly consistent with people in the early stages of
higher education.
There was also an unexpected rash of chocolaterias and I popped into Cafe Entre Lagos one afternoon to sample their wares. Having eaten my year's allocation of individual chocolates in Bariloche, I opted for a slice of sachertorte instead, a mound of chocolate cake that was almost too rich to finish. Accompanying this was a cappuccino, topped with a heavy dollop of solid cream. Not knowing that the cream was denser than the coffee - which I don't think is the normal state of affairs in a cappuccino - I unwittingly scooped away the parts that were anchoring it to the edge of the glass. The cream then slowly started to descend into the coffee and, a la Archimedes, displaced the liquid into the saucer. Some quick work with my cake fork was needed to lever out the cream and dump it on my plate, but the scene still looked as though a five year old had been at the table.
I had been under the impression that there were no coins in Chile below the value of 10 pesos (which is about 1 pence), however Valdivia cleared up my misunderstanding on that front. Firstly, there
are 1 and 5 peso coins in circulation however they're not very common. This rarity value means that, in many shops or supermarkets, if your change is going to need one or more of the coins but they don't have any, then you will be asked if you want to donate the change to charity instead. This explained why most of my visits to a check-out had resulted in two pieces of interaction with the cashier - one to ask if I had a points card for the particular supermarket chain (which I'd guessed at), and one to ask about the change (which I had guessed was something like this, however I couldn't see why they were bothering to ask if there were no smaller denomination coins in existence).
The only real attraction that I visited in the town was the fish market down by the river, where some lazy sea lions waited for the fishmongers to periodically throw them a fish head or some entrails. I was more captivated by the fishmongers themselves, deftly cutting, gutting, and cleaning their catch before offering it for sale.
With the weather clearly not enabling Valdivia to show her best side,
I was gone two nights later.
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