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Published: February 4th 2007
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Chile; The Road South (2)
A typical bus scene. Donald Pleasence lookalike Steve has joined us by now and I´m lucky enough to have the front. Sunday 28th January 2007 to Monday 29th January, 2007
After a couple of short stops on the seven lake route we finally arrived in the City of Valdivia, reputedly one of Chile´s most beautiful although I unfortunately was not to witness too much of it. With everyone asleep bar Sergio, Tonia and me Vicky had come to the front of the bus for some conversation and was sat on steps at my feet. As we entered town Tonia informed everyone that we were here and, as was now the norm, explained a bit about the Cities history. She told us that the City architecture had a large German influence from the 1860´s at which I, like you sometimes do, let out a jokingly long and loud ´booooh´. She laughed and booed too though I´m not too sure she knew why. Vicky looked up at me from the steps of the bus mouth wide open in horror and whispered "we´ve got a German on board you know". My jaw dropped. Due to my limited contact with Katrin and her increasing alienation from the rest of the group (Dave the Canadian despised her) I´d forgotten she even existed.
By now it
Chile; The Road South (2)
A few pals get a lift home after a night on the town. was 4pm and the suggestion was to buy something from the wonderful fish market by the banks of the river for dinner to be cooked at the hostel and retire to a reputed local restaurant for a late lunch. Katrin the Kraut rebelled, she didn´t want to cook dinner with heathens and wanted to go straight to the hostel and proceeded to seek out each member of the group in the market and press gang them into mutiny. Eventually Harriet, Catharine, Anth, Vicky, Canada Chris, Sergio, Tonia and I sat down to eat lunch. I was indecisive as usual so pointed at the bowl of a woman sitting adjacent eating seafood and who really looked as though she was enjoying her meal and said "I'll have that". I'd ordered a dish called 'seafood' and a bowl containing steaming fruits of the sea was soon placed in front of me. The only thing I recognised was a few mussels. This´d be interesting I thought.
There were three intruiging orange balls in there and when I picked one up between my finger and thumb to enquire what exactly it was it squashed between my digits like a water filled balloon. Sergio
told me it was a Puire (Puree). In for a penny I thought and like a contestant on ´I´m A Celebrity´ doing a challenge, popped it into my mouth and bit. I cut through the outer skin and a blob of gritty, foul tasting gunge spread around my mouth. Uggh ! That was the end of dinner apart from bread and wine to rid the taste.
At lunch Sergio told me a story of how when he was a student at the University of Santiago studying computers, the days of holes punched in cards long before we have what we have today, that he came across a way to calculate the winning ticket numbers in the national lotto in two hours. The existing method would do it no faster than eight. He told me that his lecturer had stolen his idea and had made a lot of money from it and as he finished his tale a bitter smile crossed his lips. "Bastardo" I commented. "No" he replied pausing slightly, the smile now transformed into a frown "Fucking Bastardo". We both laughed.
Southampton Dave and I pooled his leftover Salmon and my whole huge Hake that cost just
over a quid to prepare a special recipe fish dinner, well nothing special actually just fried in butter with garlic, peppers, onion and mushrooms and then I retired down the spiral staircase to the lounge where Tonia, Catherine, Harriet and I watched the movie ´Rain Man´, invented a guess the movie game as cable over here must feature about thirty movie channels and then watched ´Sex and the City´ in Spanish. It´s amazing how you can follow trash even when you don´t understand what they´re saying and before I knew it it was three am and my bunk was beckoning.
For the final day our final destination was Puerto Varas, 1109 km south of our original starting point of Santiago, a popular holiday destination on the shores of Lake Lanquihue and again our journey took us through more beautiful scenery contained within the Seven Lakes region. We stopped mid afternoon at the port town of Puerto Montt where a few of us dined in a fish restaurant. There were two definite sides to the group now, the quiet serious side, those in bed by twelve each night and who rarely touched alcohol and the other side, the side I
Chile; The Road South (2)
Leg stretch and photo stop in the seven lakes region. was inevitably in but everyone has been great as far as I´m concerned, even Katrin the textbook German who has succeeded in getting up just about everyone else´s nose at some point or other.
Puerto Varas is another town boasting a strong German influence (no boo´s this time) and just half an hour from Puerto Montt. We had to split into two seperate hostel´s and after arriving at 6pm I was roomed with Harriet, Catherine and Tonia. Poor Dave was with the hard snoring Sergio. It was the final night of the trip for Dave, the Canadian girls and myself whilst the rest returned to Santiago so we had arranged a farewell supper at our hostel.
Tonia and Catherine (a chef back home) prepared gorgeous Cantata?, salmon stuffed with local cheeses, tomatoes and oregon with all the trimmings whilst Canadian Dave took control of the fruit chocolate fondue dessert. The food was wonderful as was the wine.
At one stage in the evening Southampton Dave came to me with a mix of horror, amusement and incredulity on his face and told me he´d just entered the lounge and found Sergio, chair pulled up right in front of
Chile; The Road South (2)
Marching statues at the lakeside. the TV, staring intently at the porn channel as though he was watching the daily news and long after the sun came up Tonia and I were still up chatting. We finally got to our bunks at 7.30am, okay for me as I had two days with no deadlines but the bus departed at nine and she was on it.
I was pleased I´d made the decision to go on the tour. I met some great people, had many, many laughs and saw a lot more of this wonderful country than I would have done had it been left to my own devices. Now, due to transport availability, I had two nights in Puerto Varas to rest up before heading for Buenos Aires.
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This is great stuff as usual.You seemed to have dropped in lucky with abus full of top cooks.You should have photographed Katrin so we have a face.Maybe you did.