Valdivia wins the bet

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After my last entry, I asked again at the ticket counter if there were tickets to Valdivia open yet, in case of a cancellation. He said no, so I aksed if there were any tickets to Valdivia from Lanco, the town we were headed. He said yes, so we got one for 8pm, about an hour after we would be arriving in Lanco. This was sheer genius on my part as Lanco turned out to be a hole. I have no idea where we would have slept or even gotten tickets to Valdivia if we didn´t already have them. We arrived in Valdivia just in time to catch a beautiful pink sunset as we walked around looking for a home. We tried one from our book and it was full, but the woman walked us down to another house and there was space there. It´s common here to stay in people´s houses that they made into a hostal, so that in effect we are paying house guests.

The place we ended up was funny. It was run by this little old lady with a crazy voice who drank something that looked like a witch´s brew. It was a little pot of herbs and she had a metal straw/filter that she would sip out of. She would add hot water after finishing each cupful and sometimes some sugar. I have no idea what it was. She also had cats everywhere, but mostly outside. They were even sleeping in the trees. Once we got in, Scott went to sleep immediately and I walked to the biggest and best supermarket in South America, as far as I could tell. Bought some fixings for a ham and cheese sandwich and went back to sit with the ladies and chat as much as I am able. It was entertaining. By this time it was 11pm and things seem to only get started then. I got to sleep after dinner and the next morning I walked around town and down to the river while Scott had a lie in. There is a cool fish and fruit market at the river with several fat lazy sealions who sit right where the men clean their fish and they just suck up all the leftovers. From one vantage point, I could see the market, a building from 1910 and a band playing music like you would have heard in 1930 - it was all very surreal. I went back for Scott at 1pm and we did essentially the same walk over and saw a bit more and then had some food from the supermarket for lunch. I was hoping to be lazy and see my first movie of the trip but they were all in Spanish. We ended up just having a lazy day and going to sleep early, so we could leave the next morning for Argentina. I´m sure we could have seen and done more here, but this is just how lazy we were at the time.

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Photos

Market time
Valdivia had a really colorful market.

Fatties
These fat sea lions just hang around the market, waiting for fish scraps.

Valdivia
This was my favorite view of town, from the market.

Comments

[Miranda]

:)
Ah, Jenny's first Mate. It's good, huh?