Advertisement
Published: March 8th 2009
Edit Blog Post
We arrived in Santiago on Monday evening expecting to only spend one night there then leave the next day en route to Conaripe in the south of Chile just north of Patagonia to WWOOF (working world wide on organic farms). However, we liked the city so much we decided to stay an extra day. Also, our hostel was one of the nicest we stayed at yet- big spacious rooms, comfortable mattresses, a pretty outdoor porch with trees, flowers, coffee shop-like tables to sit at... big clean kitchen and dining area.
So after a good night´s sleep, we used the day to do some touring of the city. Santiago reminds me a lot of a European city. The center of the city is where all the big business are so its wide streets and big buildings, but then the surrounding smaller neighborhoods are pretty, smaller colorful buildings and narrow streets with the mountains in the background because Santiago is just in front of the Andes. So I went to some museums and walked around to get to know the city in the little time I had there. We went to a special exhibit on Diego Rivera and Frital Kahlo, 2 famous
Mexican painters from the eary 1900s and a pre Columbian museum. The Pre Columbian museum was really interesting... all kinds of artifacts from the indigenous cultures all throughout Central and South America, which is still a big part of a lot of the cultures here although they are much less prominent. Specifically, in southern Chile and parts of southern Argentina, mostly Patagonia, there is still a large Mapuche, which means people of the earth, population and their culture still has an influence on life here. It was helpful to learn a bit about that in the museum because the farm we ended up working on turned out to take a large part of their ideals from Mapuche traditions. Also in the museum was a special sea exhibit on how the fishermen used to fish... the different types of rafts they used depending on how far out at sea they were going to go, what types of fish they caught, the way they handled their business... and they also had a special mummification process. By the way, it is recordered that they used mummification before the ancient Egyptians did. Similar process, but still very different from the ancient Egyptians. The musuem
Santiago
La plaza de armas had 5 mummies on exhibit, displaying the 2 types of mummification they used. Their is black paint and red paint mummification, one where all the organs are removed and replaced with grasses, vegetables, etc. to fill the space and then covered with grasses, clay, then a paint coating, while the other leaves the organs in place. Another cool part about Santiago is La Plaza de Armas because it tells you a lot about the culture of the country... its considered the historic center of Santiago. La Plaza de Armas contains a beautiful barroque style Cathedral... all Latin American countries are Catholic countries..., the central post office, the National History Museum, and the building of municipality. Its all located in a very spacious, pretty square with lots of gardens and benches to sit on, statues, and some street vendors selling art. We also visited the Bellavista neighborhood, one of the smaller neighborhoods around the city center, which is very pretty and where Pablo Neruda, a famous Chilean writer and politicians house is located.
So after 2 days in Santiago, we took an overnight bus to Temuco, about 9 hours south of Santiago, and from there took another bus to Coñaripe
to the farm we were going to work on, which is just north of the Patagonia region. This region is full of mountains, lakes, volcanos, thermal pools, and little mountain towns, which is what Conaripe is like. We arrived in Conaripe pretty early in the morning. I felt like I was on a treasure hunt, because we first followed directions in an email we got from the farm to someones house in the town, arrived there, then were given another map that they kindly drew out for us to follow on a 30 minute walk through the town, down a dirt road along the Lago Calafquen, down the lakeside beach, walk through a river with all our bags, and finally the destination point, the farm on la isla Millawapia, a tiny, tiny island on the Lake Calafquen. Calafquen is Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, for water that looks like an ocean. Most of the names in this region are in Mapudungun. So the island was really pretty... far, far away from the town, completely in the middle of the mountains with a really good view of the Volcan Villa Rica, a huge volcano that looks like its just on the other
side of the lake but really an hour away towards Pucon.
So upon our arrival at the island, Lily, who started and runs Millawapi came out to greet us and welcomed us in. We set up our campsite and got settled first, then joined everyone else at work. So, to explain the island... we thought we were going to simply work on an organic farm doing something like pulling weeds or collecting firewood or something... but turns out it wasnt quite the organic farm we expected... it was a permaculture farm... basically a little village made completely out of recycled materials with no electricityor running water with a main focus on permaculture, self sufficiency, natural healing, holistic medicine. So, just a little different that what we were expecting. To give you a bit of an idea of what life was like there... everything is made out of recycles materials as you can see in the pictures, there is one sturdy shelter made out of wood, and everything else like the kitchen, the sink area, etc. are made out of recycled pieces of wood, sticks, bamboo, leaves, etc... and all the water comes from the lake, even drinking water. There
Conaripe- Isla Millawapi
meal time... homemade bread and marmelade were about 30 people there, all Chilean except for one Argentine. There is some sleeping space in the refugio, but not enough for 30 so everyone brings tents or at leasts makes something tent like to sleep in. The schedule of the day is normally a 8 a.m. wake up, breakfast, which is always something like warm cereal or freshmade bread and marmelade made over the campfire, then 4 hours of work on the island, lunch which is normally bread or soup, free time, dinner, then off to bed normally by about 10 or 11. It was nice because its a really healthy schedule... wake up with the sunrise, and go to bed more or less at sunset. Work can be anything from maintaining things around the island to building a little hut we were working on, or making shelves out of bamboo and leaves, which I was doing... simple things like that. All the people there were pretty much complete hippies... all really nice and friendly. They all hear about the island by word of mouth and come to enjoy the island and learn about holistic medicine because they are all very interested in that. They take a lot
Conaripe- Isla Millawapi
meal time, that is the kitchen in the background from Mapuche traditions too. One day, 2 Mapuche women that were ''curadores de semillas'' ... i guess that translates directly to healers that use seeds?... but basically they use all kinds of plants as forms of medicine and healing and take all their information from Mapuche traditions. One tradition that is pretty far off from anything I have ever heard of in the U.S. was using hallucinogenic plants as a form of healing (shamanism)... for example,for specific "healing procedures"... dont quite know what to call it... they use Salvia, which if anyone has ever heard of that is something that is abused a lot in the U.S. by people who just want to get a high. So that was life on the island in a nutshell, (no saliva)... but the pictures will give you a better idea. Overall, one of the weirder, more random experiences so far, but I really enjoyed it... and it was interesting to learn about the way these people see health and medicine because it was so foriegn from any other perspectives ive ever seen.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0519s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
susan
non-member comment
All very interesting!...especially the working farm with the hippies! Keep having fun! xoxo