Chilean wine country: a little slice of paradise

After spending a few more days in Pucon, enjoying the hotsprings and volcanoes, we decided it was time to head for wine country.

Los Pozzones Hotsprings about 30km outside of Pucon that we rode to.

Chris and Sarah on top of the Villarica Volcano

We took the overnight bus from Pucon to a little town called San Fernando. Arriving at 6 in the morning, we put our bikes back together on the side of the panamerican highway and started cycling towards the Colchagua valley, one of Chile's most famous wine regions.

Our first stop was the Viu Manet viña.

Then we headed to Las Niñas viña.

We soon realized that it was much more economical to buy entire bottles of wine and drink them, rather than to pay to taste them all. Unfortunately, this makes cycling a little more difficult!

Near the end of the day, we were cycling by this house with a pool and, on a whim (and a few bottles of wine) decided to ask if we could swim in it. It's the kind of thing you would never do in Canada but somehow, in South America, it seems like the people would be offended if you wanted to ask but didn't.

We met Christian, who is studying human rights at the university in Santiago and was just on his summer break.

The next morning, we decided that our strategy from the day before wasn't so smart, so we did wine tasting the way you're supposed to. At the Estampa viña, we were introduced to their range of wines by Soledad, one of the owners of the winery. She had cycled the Carretera Austral previously and was really excited for us that we were on bicycles.

Of course, she invited us to stop and swim in the pool of one of her family's houses, about 30km down the road.

They had really beautiful dogs, who drank out of the pool on hot days.

We also got a tour of the property, including these little earthen structures that they use to make "carbon", which are like briquettes for the ubiquitous "asados", or barbeques, that happen here. They fill this little dome with wood and heat it by underground fire for two weeks until it all turns into little chunks of black carbon.

The next day, we arrived in Pichilemu, on the Pacific coast and met up with Christian who had invited us to stay in another of his parents' houses. I guess wine country is where the sort of people live who have multiple houses!

It was Chris' last night in the country, so we were finally convinced to go out dancing. We have so far been considered quite un-fun for leaving social events by 1 or 2am, but actually managed to stay up until the bar closed at 6am. It was pretty fun, and people here really know how to dance!

The next morning, we bussed into Santiago and got to work packing Chris' bike for the plane ride. It was a Sunday and very few things were open, so we had to piece together a box from four smaller kids bike boxes.

It was sad to say 'goodbye' again to Chris, but she keeps turning up in different parts of the world, so maybe I won't have to wait too too long to see her again.

Sarah had a few more days in Santiago, so we quickly set to work seeing all there was to see.

Sarah dancing salsa.

Public displays of affection are also a huge part of the culture. Most people live with their parents until they are married, so the parks are full of young people making out!

Phillipe, the guy we are couchsurfing with, is a huge cyclist, so he introduced us to the bike paths and took us up the Cerro San Cristobal, a little mountain in the middle of the city.

The view from there of Santiago was really stunning.

It's really interesting being in a city, not just as a traveller, but knowing I will be coming back to live here for four months while Nelson goes to school. I've been scoping out good neighbourhoods to live in and have already found my favourite vegetarian restaurant.

Today I'm off to Valparaiso, where I will spend the holidays. Apparently, after Rio de Janeiro, Valparaiso is the best place in latin america to spend New Years Eve. In the five days leading up to it, there is a 'cultural carnaval' happening - music,concerts, movies, parades, photography, poetry, and theater - much of it in the streets and for free.

Crossing into Chile: a lesson in possibilism

There are several ways of crossing into Chile from Argentina, many of which are quite simple. But easy is often inversely proportional with fun, so, after much deliberation, we chose what the guidebook described as "the most beautiful but by far most logistically difficult" route. Come on, who wouldn't? There were two 50km long lakes to get ourselves and our bikes across with a 12 km stint of gravel road and an international border between them, just to get ourselves to the edge of nowhere in Chile. And we had heard from other cyclists that the ferry that usually ran across the second lake was broken down and that the small passenger-only boat that ran once a day wouldn't take them and their bikes. Sarah was sceptical at first that this was the best route but Chris and I convinced her that it was POSSIBLE that we could still make it this way and, if not, we would see some beautiful scenery and come back and try another way. A last minute brainwave convinced us that we should maybe take some Chilean currency with us.

The first lake had a hilly, gravel road running beside it that we didn't really want to ride, so we thought we'd go down to the dock and see if there just happened to be someone sailing up the lake that wanted to take us and all of our gear. Well, of course there was!

His name was Daniel, and he took Chris and I, while his friends took Sarah. He was excited that I knew the basics of how to sail and immediately put me at the helm to steer into the wind while him and Chris put up the mainsail and genoa.

This was a brief fairly calm moment cutting between a little island and the mainland but it was REALLY windy and the boat was constantly heeled over twice as far as we ever had Selkie, which was scary but super fun. This boat had all the same components as Selkie, but being half the length, everything was in miniature and really easy to use.

We tacked our way up the lake and chatted sailing in Spanish.

Chris even got comfortable enough to have a quick nap.

I had the ultimate Argentinian experience of sailing while drinking maté.

Sarah has accused Chris and I of dressing her up funny and taking photos to embarass her. I admit to buying her the power skirt (as any good friend would do) but she put together this little sailing ensemble herself.

We camped at the far end of the lake, were invited onto another boat for pizza, and woke up to a lovely morning.

We then rode 6km or so of dirt and gravel road towards the border.

Before crossing, we stopped to buy bread and Rosa, who had made the bread that morning in her wood burning oven, informed us that if we were planning on crossing the border with fruits or vegetables, the Chilean officials would chuck them out. So, she invited us to use her kitchen to cook up all of our food. We had a wonderful few hours with her, but weren't able to convince her that she liked Indian curry.

When we went to leave Argentina, the border officials informed us that the boat left at 3pm instead of 4pm, as we had heard, and that we had just missed it. So they invited us to stay for dinner.

Then they invited us to set up our tents on their property.

The next morning we crossed into Chile. I hope I never have to try to explain why my passport says I left Argentina on December 2nd but entered Chile on December 3rd.

If we were at all worried that Chileans might not be as helpful or generous as Argentinians, that fear was quickly put to rest. The border police quickly offered us a ride the rest of the way down the gravel road to the second lake.

Yay! Now we just had to get ourselves onto the "no-bikes boat", as we had come to refer to it...

The small boat pulled up and we got to work helping people and their luggage off of it, all the while practicing in our heads how to plead in Spanish for them to let us and our bicycles on. But we needn't have - as soon as they had unloaded everyone, they picked up our bikes and started tying them to the front of the boat. Phew!

On the boat, people told us about some hotsprings that were about 30km down the road, and we decided to make for them that night.

Upon starting out down the bad gravel road, we pretty quickly realized that there was no way would make it before dark. That's when we noticed something strange and wondrous in the trees...

We stopped to see what the heck it was, and were all astounded...

incredulous...

and happily surprised.

It was 'the magic mountain', a volcano-shaped
hotel with rocks on the outside, a waterfall pouring down it, and grass growing on it.

It was a bit out of our budget, so we decided to flip a coin to see if we should stay. The coin said we should continue to the hotsprings, which disappointed all of us, so we decided to stay anyway.

The suspension bridge coming out of the right hand side of it is the emergency exit!

It was both posh and fantastical inside. This is the 'skywalk' to the restaurant, suspended in mid-air and with live trees growing through it.

The hottub was a hollowed out tree trunk, complete with a welcoming pisco sour. We decided that, although we were going to miss Argentina, we were going to like Chile.

We were the only guests, so we had the run of the place, including the games room. We hadn't played cards yet on the entire trip, so decided it was time to play Euchre. We didn't have a fourth person, so a giant conch shell filled in. Here is me showing 'Joe' his cards.

We really didn't want to leave the paradise of the magic mountain, but the clock struck noon, our carriage turned back into bicycles, and it was time to go. It was a hard, hilly gravel ride to Liquiñe, the small village with the hotsprings, but it was punctuated with pretty spectacular views.

In fact, we spent so much time looking at the scenery and pushing our bikes that we only made it about 20km and had to ask a nice family on the way if we could set up our tents at their farm. They invited us in to cook our dinner and chat, and we learned that they had been at a meeting that evening regarding a hydroelectric project that was being proposed for the area. The people in their village were generally supportive of the project but she told us that the people of Liquiñe were generally opposed to it.

It wasn't until we were making hot water for coffee the next morning that we realized we had set up right next to a cow skull.

We finally made it to Liquiñe, and this nice man rowed us across the river so we could get to the hotsprings.

Besides the hotsprings, there wasn't much to do in the town. We heard that the community consultation meeting for the power project was happening there that night, so we decided to go.

The mostly Norweigan-owned company had just begun their powerpoint presentation when a large group of Mapuche, the indigenous people of the southern part of Chile, came in with banners and took over the meeting to voice their opposition to it. It was pretty powerful to witness. The project proposes to divert part of several rivers underground through turbines in order to generate power, which is much less harmful to the local environment than a large dam would be, but it seems that the major issue is the lack of inclusion and respect for the Mapuche in their consultation process, which we certainly witnessed at the meeting.

It's obviously also part of a larger historical and political process, where the Mapuche culture is used to bring in tourism dollars at the same time that their rights and culture and use of their traditional lands are being eroded.

A double shot of culture as commodity. This billboard was on the way into Pucon, where we are now, and which we barely made it to on the little Chilean money we had.

Our last morning in Liquiñe, we had to count up all of our change to see if we still had enough to have a coffee.

We did. Luckily Pucon has a bank.

We're headed north next to cycle around wine country.