Los Ríos - volcanos, lakes, rain forest and hot springs

Throughout January and February we didn't really get out of town. I guess we were too busy with work and other things - we had a few couch surfers around and on Saturdays we went to watch German movies screened by the Goethe Institut. Jan and Feb is also the main holiday season in Chile and therefore the traffic, pollution and general huzzle and buzzle in the city is only half as bad as for the rest of the year. So actually quite a good time to stay put.

Nevertheless, when Patricia lined up a couple of site visits some 800km south of Santiago for last week, we jumped at the opportunity to go and explore a part of Chile which we hadn't been to, yet. Our little adventure started on Wednesday with an 8 hour road trip along the Panamericana, to Temuco, where Patricia had arranged to meet a colleague Thursday morning. Along the way we noticed how the landscape gradually changed from the fairly dry shrubland of central Chile to a lush landscape of tall trees and green pastures. And pine plantations and large corn and grain fields. This is the agricultural heartland of Chile, where every few hundred metres some massive billboard advertises the advantage of herbicide "Just-spray-the-crap-out-of-it®", bovine antibiotic "Not-quite-resistant-yet®" and genetically manipulated Frankenstein varieties of all sorts of things.

Yes, Chile has totally sold out to Monsanto & Co, I am afraid. Which makes it even more important to support small independent and organic producers (also see our new Sustainable Chile section, we hope to expand it over time as we come across more stuff).

Billboards aside, the landscape is not dissimilar to central Europe, except for the odd snow covered cone shaped volcano on the horizon.

This is where we wanted to spend the weekend, but first a couple of met mast inspections (Patricia) and some exploring on his own (Christian) had to be taken care of. Temuco didn't have that much to offer to us, so we were glad that we spent Thursday night in Valdivia, another town a little further south. Even Mario liked Valdivia for the long walk along the water front and the dozen or so fat lazy sea lions which tend to flollop next to the footpath not far from the Casino.

Friday afternoon we left Valdivia and headed to Lago Calafquén where we had arranged to meet up with a friend of ours at a lakeside campsite. Unfortunately, this also coincided with the weather turning from sunny and nice to rainy and miserable, which actually wasn't all that surprising given that Valdivia gets almost 2500mm of precipitation annually (see wiki link further above). One of Patricia's colleagues said recently: "Hay solo dos estaciónes en Valdivia: el invierno y la de tren". But I guess that's the Santiago perspective. (o:

The rain didn't keep us from enjoying ourselves on Saturday, we actually caught a few sunny spells during our walk towards the border of Parque Nacional Villarrica. Apart from that, experiencing the Valdivian temperate rain forest in the rain is probably more authentic, anyway.

Since we're always game for some hot springs, especially if they are in an amazing setting with a waterfall, we ended what was a thoroughly successful day in the Termas El Rincón:

Sunday was another loooong road trip back to Santiago, although we tried to break it into more manageable chunks by stopping at Salto del Laja, the Chile mini version of Iguazú. Seemed to be a very popular weekend destination with an overwhelming feel of a flea market. Though we managed to find a quiet spot to cook some quinoa on our camping stove.

A few more photos of our trip below: