Volcán Villarica

Well looks like we've been too busy to write blog posts again lately... We had our first family visitors from Europe, our little veggie garden is coming along nicely thanks to a couple of weekends of efforts we dedicated to it, and we climbed our first volcano!

Christian's parents stayed with us for a week at the beginning of November and we tried to show them around a little. We took them on walks in the La Campana National Park an hour north-west of Santiago, the Cordillera just east of Santiago, and of course the sights in the centre of Santiago, La Moneda, Plaza de Armas etc. Not to forget the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, a museum that commemorates the human rights abuses following the 1973 coup in Chile. Also a day trip to Valparaiso. It was nice to spend a little time together (o:

Lunch in the Cordillera

We had a few unusually late cold spells and rain throughout September and October but in the last few weeks things have clearly changed and our little pumpkin plants and peas and tomatoes and beans and sun flowers and a few other things are really picking up so that we're kind of running out of space a bit. We ended up planting a few potatoes in large plastic bags because of that. We are also trying to grow a number of new plants this year we haven't tried before, such as peanuts and water melons, we'll post some photos when they're a bit bigger. Also the compost is doing great in the warm weather now. We've worked out that the trick is to keep it moist and add nitrogen by means of... well, how to put it nicely... urinating on it (as in don't use the toilet... our adaptation of the "if it's yellow, let it mellow..."). Our landlady would be shocked if she knew :-p But since she doesn't she probably also enjoyes the fact that we're looking after it and we'll give her some of the 5 bags of compost we sieved out of it the other day so she can use it in her part of the garden. And no, the compost doesn't smell, in case you were wondering.

Our most exciting adventure recently though was couple of weeks ago when we managed to combine one of Patricia's work trip with a weekend "down south". We headed for Pucon, a small touristy town about 800km south of Santiago. We had visited this part of Chile together once before and of course wanted to come back for more. Although a weekend isn't enough to fully enjoy the clean air, beautiful views, impressive volcanoes, blue lakes and pristine forests around there, we had a great time climbing Volcán Villarica and relaxing in the Termas Los Pozones.

While for us the 1400m ascent to the crater rim of the volcano in perfect condition with firm snow, clear skies, excellent views (from the top we could see Volcán Osorno almost 200km further south) and hardly any wind was surprisingly easy, we heard that only a few days earlier three tourist were less lucky and probably perished. Or at least a search for them was called off without any results a few days ago. Not the first victims of the mountain and a stark reminder that these volcanos also have a side that is not shown on the picture post cards.

Worth mentioning, because it was very enjoyable, was the sliding-on-your-butt-way-down. While it took us 4 hours to get up it was no more than 40min on the way back thanks to a mini (as in the size of two butt cheeks) plastic butt sledge.

Anyway, a few photos below (for high resolution version click here).