PUCON ON LAKE VILLARICA

What Chile lacks in the indigenous culture so prevalent in everyday life in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, it makes up for in natural beauty. Chile has a very European feel to it and no more so than in the Lake District south of 700 km south of Santiago. Walking around the town of Pucon on the shore of Lake Villarica with its chalet style buildings and restaurants featuring fondues on the menu, you could imagine yourself in a ski resort in France. Snow capped mountains and volcanoes surrounded the town completing the alpine experience.

We were all glad to call our little self catering chalet home for 8 days and it came complete with a very friendly dog who made himself at home by the fireplace. It was a nice change from hotel rooms no matter how delightful they were.

There were so many activities to keep us busy. Unfortunately, ski season had just finished so we went horseback riding, white water rafting and canopying instead. Canopying is climbing to platforms in trees and zipping across the forest and rivers on wires!

The real highlight of the week had to be David, Rory and Alice ascending the Villarica volcano. Nine hours of arduous climbing with ice picks and crampons was not my idea of fun but they all managed it and I couldn't be more proud of them. They came back physically exhausted, the slush and ice having made the climb more difficult, but thoroughly exhilarated by reaching the top and looking into the crater.

HEADING SOUTH

The strange thing about travelling in the southern hemisphere for a long period of time is the confusion between what your eyes are seeing and what your mind is telling you. We have been chasing the beginning of the spring season for months now. Tulips, lilacs, azeleas and magnolia are in full bloom and it feels like we are in an eternal spring... yet my mind knows it is October!

We spent a few days travelling through one of the wine producing areas of Chile south of Santiago. Grown alongside the vineyards are orchards of fruit trees in full bloom. The vines bear embryonic bunches of grapes that will mature into plump, juicy fruit, ready to be harvested in late February.

We toured two wineries, Mont Gras and Montes, both completely different in their approach to acheiving quality wines with signature characteristics.

At Montes, the ultra premium red wines are casked in oak an placed in a softly lit, humidity controlled modern cellar with soothing Gregorian chant music played to them continually! The smell of oak and grapes, the soft music and dim lighting were certainly evocative to our senses, perhaps the wine benefits to?

Whilst in Santa Cruz we spent a few hours in the fantastic museum. The range of exhibits was emormous covering subjects relative to South America ranging from palentology, textiles and pottery, and Chilean social ,military and maritime history. There were also exibits relating to Charles Darwin's travels through South America and an extensive display of steam powered engines and vintage cars including a steam lorry from Sentinal works in Shrewsbury. A similar lorry is to be found in the Morris oil company's collection.

CHILE, CHILAY OH OH OH...

Arrived in Chile and only had to drive 7 km before we hit a TARMACED road. You would have had to endure the previous 10 hours on a dirt track to fully appreciate the implications of this! Fortunately we arrived at the Chilean Customs office in San Pedro de Atacama just as a tour bus was pulling out and just before another tour bus pulled in. The Chilean border guards are very thorough, looking for fruits, vegetables and drugs coming into the country and luckily our timing meant we were through in just under and hour. We could then start to enjoy looking around this desert town, and relaxing at our lovely hotel.




Although it is early spring here in Chile, we were in the Far North of the country in the middle of the Atacama desert. The weather was warm but not too hot and needless to say dry. The children swam in the swimming pool and caught up with some school work. We ventured out on mountain bikes one day and would have done so again had our derrieres not been so sore from the tortuous bike seats!

After a few days we flew to Santiago. I immediately decided I was going to love Santiago when we cleared the jetway and I was greeted by a STARBUCKS!!!! !

Our hotel had fabulous facilities: gym, tennis court, gardens perfect for football and rugby practice and 2 swimming pools. We decided that this would be PE week and made the most of the facilities with tennis coaching and football and rugby practice! We also spent 2 afternoons at a fantastic interactive science museum for children. The bed of nails was probably more comfortable that one or two hotel beds we have slept on!. Rory had a riot whilst strapped into the gyroscope and Alice in the spinning chair testing centrifugal force!
























We did a city tour with a guide who was a Pinochet sympathizer, "yes 35,000 people suffered but it was good for the country!!!". Yeah 35,000 that we know of!!! was on the tip of my tongue but as I'm in a foreign country I thought I would restrain myself. There are lots of memorials in the north of the country set up by the families of those that went missing and were tortured, and buried in mass graves. There are also areas which are still peppered with land mine and you have to watch out for the beware signs!

BOLIVIA OR BUST!

We arrived on Bolivian mainland by hydrofoil, and pulled into Huatajata, a port on the shores of Lake Titicaca. There we were met by an Aymara family who have set up a museum and tourist attraction. This Aymara gentleman made and sailed the RA II reed boat with Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer. Together they successfully made the epic 4000 km journey across the Atlantic in 57 days. The children and adults alike were fascinated by the models of all the boats and the stories he told about the journeys.














We then traveled by coach to La Paz. We enjoyed a city tour with our guide Rodrigo and a lovely Australian family perusing all the weird and wonderful things that the cities markets have to offer...Everything from Ipods to llama foetuses (place under a floorboard of a new house and it will bring you luck!). There was also a fabulous array of strange looking potatoes which would keep our farming friends amused with for weeks!

David and the children watched the final of the South American Tour, and generally spent time catching up with work and school work.










We then flew to Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia. It is a pretty colonial city, but unfortunately, David deleted the photos before I had the chance to upload them onto the laptop.

From there we headed to Potosi a mining town which became one of the richest cities in the world on account of Cerro Rico, or "rich mountain" with its huge deposits of silver. It is only mined by small cooperatives now and the city is only a shadow of what it once was. A tour of the silver museum gives us a hint of what the city must have been like. We also visited a smaller museum and Rory had the chance to pour his first silver ingot!

Potosi is a staging post for tours of the Uyuni Salt Flats. Crossing the Salar de Uyuni, the largest and highest salt lake in the world is one of the great Bolivian trips. The bright blue skies contrast with blinding white salt and there is just nothing on the horizon! It is a strange sight to behold as you think it should be cold like the arctic yet you come across "islands" covered in giant cactus!

























We also visited the Mummy museum in a cave on the edge of the salt flats. The children were fascinated by these Inca mummies some of which still had their skin and hair!





















One of the highlights of the visit to Uyuni was the time spent at one of the salt hotels literally in the middle of nowhere. Some of the buildings around Uyuni are made with blocks of salt cut by hand from the flats. At this hotel, now a museum, there were two children, a two year old girl and a 12 year old boy. They were as delighted to seeing European children as Rory,Alice William and James were to play with them. There was nothing around for miles and it was a nice interlude for all the children.

We also had a chance to play a little tennis and improvised cricket!







One of the last things we did before leaving the Salt Flats was to take these pictures. You can create great illusions with just a camera and a little imagination!!




We they started our overland journey across sout west Bolivia towards the boarder with Chile. The "road" when we had one was rough and not much more than a dirt track which completely disappeared at times! The scenery was worth it though with fantastic coloured lakes and miles of barren but striking volcanic landscapes. The red and green lagoons were surreal with thousands of pink flamingoes wading in the shallows. We then visited a geyser field with caldron like holes in ground churning up grey boiling mud. all this at 5000 metres above sea level!