Alex's Adventures in Chile 2012: Bariloche, Pucon, and Puerto Varas

Again, sorry for the delayed blog post, but I have three trips to update on: Pucón Bariloche, and Puerto Varas.

Our trip to Pucón was with the study abroad program, so the entire group went, along with one of our Chilean mentors and our two advisors. Pucón is a small tourist town a little bit south of Valdivia, and like everywhere in Chile, the scenery is beautiful. There are a lot of mountains around because Pucón is a popular ski town in the winter, and there is also a beautiful lake, which is apparently very popular during the summer. There are also active volcanoes surrounding Pucón (the one you will see in my pictures is Villarrica).

The first day we were in Pucón, we explored the city and visited the Mapuche museum. There were a lot ancient artifacts that a local Mapuche leader collected from various tribes in the area. I thought the jewelry, made from melting silver coins the Mapuche received from the Spaniards, was especially cool. That night, we went to some hot springs about 45min outside of Pucón. The second day we left Pucón and drove to a smaller town to experience some of Mapuche culture more closely. We met a couple of Mapuche women, and got to sit around a fire, drink mate (a type of tea), and eat freshly cooked piñónes (nut like seeds from the national tree of Chile). We also ate a traditional Mapuche lunch, which consisted of sopaipillas made from piñón flour, vegetables, and mashed potatoes made from piñónes.

A couple of weekends ago, me and some of the girls from my program took a trip to Bariloche, Argentina for the long weekend. Bariloche is only about an 8 hour bus ride from Valdivia, but you still have to go through customs to leave Chile and enter Argentina. In order to cross the border from Chile to Argentina, you must pass through the Andes Mountains. I was very excited to see snow up close for the first time since I left the US! Bariloche is in Patagonia, so it is a popular city for rock climbing, bilking, skiing, and tons of extreme sports. We took a 27km bike ride through the mountains, took a chair lift to a lookout here the views were breathtaking, hiked a little, and took a tour of some caves. The caves are located in what used to be an underwater volcano, and on the walls of some of the caves there are 1300 year old Mapuche cave paintings. To enter one of the caves we had to crawl on our hands and knees and squeeze through a 3 ft by 4ft opening, but inside there was a giant cave along with a fresh water pond.

We stayed at Hostel Achlay, and I would recommend it to anyone who visits Bariloche! Argentina has a heavy Italian influence, so we ate a lot of cheese and tomatoes. The man that worked at the hostel recommended a restaurant to us where we had one of the most unhealthy things I have ever eaten: fried chicken covered in at least an inch of cheese with tomato sauce and garlic fries on the side. I fell in love with the Bariloche and its beautiful mountains, and I got a little teary-eyed when we had to leave. I wish I could have spent some more time hiking and snowboarding! On our bus back, the bus broke down on the border of Chile and Argentina, and we were stranded for about 3 hours. The bus driver even asked all of the men on the bus to help push. I got a pretty big kick out of a couple of little old men that thought they were macho and could help push.

This past week in Valdivia, I had the opportunity to go on a field trip with a history class that I am not actually in. We drove to the coast, and then took a boat to a small island. On the island is a 17^th Century Spanish castle, which has miraculously survived 2 of the strongest earthquakes recorded in history. At one point, the entire city of Valdivia (about 700 people at the time) all lived in the Castle for about a year to avoid attacks from Mapuche people living in the area.

My birthday was last week, and I celebrated with my friends and my host family. My host mom also made me a gluten free cake and a gluten free pizza! We had to be on the bus to take a trip to Puerto Varas at 8 in the morning the next day, which was a huge struggle after celebrating my birthday the night before. On the way to Puerto Varas, we visited a museum of German culture in Frutillar. In Puerto Varas, it rained nearly the entire time, so unfortunately we did not get to see much of the city. We also visited an amazing national park call Petrohue, which is famous for its river with giant rapids. On our way back to Valdidva, we stopped in the town of Puerto Mont to see the fish and artisan market.

I am leaving for Buenos Aires this week, so I will have more to report soon.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!

My hostel in Bariloche

Bariloche is famous for its ice cream

Bariloche is also famous for its chocolate- this is the best chocolate shop in Bariloche

The fried chicken + french fry meal that almost killed me

Bariloche street art

The chair lift we took to a lookout point

Andes mountains

Snow while driving through the Andes!

St. Bernard dogs are a huge tourist attraction in Bariloche- you had to pay to take a picture with them, so i took a picture of other people with the dogs