Pucon and Parque Huerquehue

We Arrived in Pucon, Chile at midnight on the 18th. It was a long day on the bus, but I got to catch up on my sleep (giovannina writing - Woody can't sleep very well on buses.) He watched me sleep, listened to his History of Baseball on his MP3 player and every time I woke up he would say "were you asleep?"

We didn't have reservations for a hostel in Pucon so we just started walking from the Bus station and a young lady came up to us on the street to tell us her mom had a hostel which had room if we wanted to go there. It was perfect, we both took hot showers and collapsed into bed.
The next morning I got up and went for a run through town. There was a beautiful beach on the lake to run along and I found the campground that we eventually used that night. There is a smoking volcano right next to the town and no one seemed to be worried. When I asked if it does that all the time they said yes!!! Yikes!!!

This was our camp Thursday night.
Check it out a smoking volcano!!!
Well, Pucon was cool but very ritzy and we just wanted to get into the mountains so we bought some food, a fuel canister (side note shout out to Glen Wallace - the stove is AWESOME!), a blanket and caught a bus to Huerquehue National Park. This picture is of our first campsite at Parque Huerquehue. We rested up here for the 20km hike we were planning for the next day to the hotsprings we had heard about on the opposite side of the park.

We started hiking at 7:30am that morning, we wanted to get going before the sun came out full force.




As we hiked it was like a botanical garden or maybe just Matt and Lilias garden ;-) there were ground fucsias and many other unknown beautiful plants. And as we climbed higher the forest was filled with monkey tail trees - soooo.... cool ;-) Just like you said, Hong !

It was a grueling trail up and down but we just kept thinking of the hotsprings at the end to keep us going.
Here the trail turned in to a road and we didn't know if we were going the right way or not but we finally made it to the hot springs and it was wonderful.
Ahhhh...
The next day was just relaxing, soaking and resting the body. The hotsprings run into the near by river - Rio Blanco - so you could soak and then jump in to the freezing cold water. They also had pools along the river that were warm from the mixture of the river and the hotsprings. Bellissimo!!!
Camp was not even 20 feet from the springs - in the middle of the night I got cold so I got out and went to soak for a little bit then climbed back into the tent.
The next day - Sunday Jan 22- we started our hike back out of the park but we had heard from some other campers that there was a woman who sold zapapillos (fried sweet bread) to the passing hikers. Her house was about 15 minutes off the main trail, so we took a detour and went to check it out. There we met Senora Pilar and her husband Juan who lived on a small peice of private property with in the park. They had a beautiful home, garden and yard. We asked if we could stay the night and they said yes, making us fresh zapapillos and hot tea,to make us feel welcome.
Here is our tent on their manicured lawn.
Great ideas for the back yard when I get home.

Relaxing on their beautiful front porch
The next morning, Senora Pilar told us that Juan had gone into town and if we wanted to follow his tracks it would be shorter than going out through the park. We both hate backtracking and were up for an adventure, so we decided to take our chances and head down the valley, following Juan's tracks (actually, it was his horse's tracks).
Some times it was really hard to follow his tracks but we became expert horseshoe trackers.
Other times the trail was easy to follow and we knew to just keep going to the lake.
We got to the lake but never found the town or Juan. After a swim in the lake and some lunch we got back on the trail which soon became a road. We were lucky to catch a ride with a middle aged shipping executive and his hard-rock loving 10 year old son to Pucon, listening to American Idiot and Kiss blaring from the car stereo. We were back in civilization.

(for more photos check out our web album)

Mexico City Pictures

Here are some photos from our stop in Mexico City. To see more, check out our Mexico City Web Album.

Arriving in Mexico City

Mexico City was our first stop on our way to Chile. We were lucky to have a cousin of a good friend to stay with (Omar and his girlfriend Fatima). Omar came to get us at the airport with a sign that said " Giovannina and Woody" it was great. We quickly learned the subway system as he took us back to thier place and talked about what to do on our day in the city. That night we went out for Sushi - it didn't really feel like we were in Mexico City - it could have been a restaurant in Seattle except in Mexico they put Cream Cheese in all of their Sushi Rolls.

This is a picture of Omar and Fatima's cats in their apartment. It was a beautiful apartment over looking the city.

Pichilemu, Chile

For Woody's birthday (Jan 16) he wanted to be by the ocean and so after some research in the Lonely Planet book, we decided to head to Pichilemu, Chile aka the World Surf Capital of Chile for a couple of days to settle into life in South America.

Only a three hour buss ride from Santiago - only costing $10/person - Pichilemu is way more than the sleepy little town described in the Lonely Planet guide. The entire town was jumping with full-on summer excitement. In droves, Chileans (mostly working class) descend upon Pichilemu for what must be like their Ft. Lauderdale. The streets were filled with people hanging out at bars and restaurants. There is a big zip-line right on the beach and a carnival complete with big tent and trapeze artists just behind the beach sands. Men pushed carts of churros up and down the beach while swarms of people frolicked in the water. They even have this crazy boat ride where a bunch of people pile on a big pontoon and get dragged through the surf by a zodiac. The funny thing is that the water is COLD. We're talking Pacific Northwest Cold, like 60 degrees cold. Serious burrrrrr. But the sun was hot and folks were on vacation, so everyone made the most of it.

Being the sun-deprived Seattlites that we are, we just laid on the beach soaking up the rays, which led to some pealing skin, but that's a small price to pay for for some real Vitamin D in January.

For our surfing friends out there, I can tell you that that surf in Pichilemu is good. Very good. There are a couple of very nice breaks just to the south of town, both rights and lefts. Unfortunately, neither of us were able to enjoy it ourselves. After a lovely birthday dinner at a charming restaurant overlooking the ocean, Giovannina and I both got a case of food poisoning and spent an entire day in bed watching Pineapple Express on our netbook (side note: food poisoning is the only excuse ever to watch Pineapple Express) . So although our hosts, Jose and Keke were very kind to us -they even got me a bottle of white wine for my birthday, which we're drinking right now - after the sunburn and food poisoning we felt like we needed to move on.

So we only spent a few days at Pichi, but would recommend it heartily to anyone passing through during the summer. Giovannina said it reminded her of Chiavari in summer - a busy tourist town, but only for the local citizens.

Santiago Chile

We arrived in Chile early Saturday morning and were greeted by insufferable bureaucracy and a $140USD (a piece) entry fee at the grand Santiago International Airport. Not typically known for its generous hospitality, this place did not exceed expectations.

We did luck out with our accommodations in Santiago. Giovannina´s cousin Anna has a friend in Santiago, Camilo, who without ever meeting us let us crash at his very lovely apartment in a pretty swanky part of town (there´s even a roof-top pool!) We crashed for a few hours on Saturday before heading out to explore Santiago.

I have to admit, I was not looking forward to spending much time in the Chilean capital - this is Woody writing - but after a few hours wandering through the city it began to grow on me. The layout is somewhat European with its broad boulevards, but the buildings are more modern and the climate made me feel like I was in San Diego or Los Angeles. We did find the glorious old Mercado Centro - The Central Market - in the middle of Santiago. This is how I described it in my journal: " a moiling and toiling fisherman´s market filled with stiff smells and floors wet with entrails. Men - only men - stomped through dark narrow stone halls yelling numbers and carrying empty crates dripping with fish juice. It was wonderful. "We ate our first ceviche, which in Chile is like a fish puree with cilantro and lime juice. It was horrible - horrible - to look at, but actually tasted quite good.

On the way back to the apartment, we stopped and watched some vaudeville entertainers. They discovered us taking photos of them and decided to make us part of their act. Giovannina got a big kick out of this...Woody didn´t but loves it when his wife is happy. It was an early night for us in preparation for our trip to the beach.

Getting Out of Seattle

Getting out of Seattle was a community effort, thank you so much!!!
Thank you Kim for helping us finish up a few house projects and for fixing our mistakes :-)
Thank you Matt for cleaning the kitchen cabinets
Thank you Maria, you got the stove cleaner than I have seen it in years
Thank you Ryan for cleaning the fridge and for getting up at 4:00am to drive us to the airport
Thank you Heather for cleaning all of our floors and helping us to organize and pack
Thank you Lilia for hosting girls night so I could get out of the house and see my best friends
Thank you Oriana and Darren (Federica and Issabella) for letting us stay at your house and cooking us dinners - mmmm........ that last meal was good :-)

Thank you to all of our wonderful friends for your words of wisdom and endearing goodbuys we will miss you all on our trip and we would not be where we are without all of you in our lives.
Giovannina and Woody