Mid-winter update

Back in January, when we wrote our last blog post, we knew that 2020 would have the potential to become quite a ...restless... year. Everyone expected a rekindling of the social protests in Chile in March, as soon as southern summer holiday season ended, and emotions running high in the run-up (and beyond) of the Constitutional Referendum, which was originally scheduled for late April. Little did we know back then what course the year would take...

All these issues haven't gone away and continue to simmer, however, COVID-19 has taken centre stage, with Chile hovering around the 5th position globally in relation to confirmed cases per one million inhabitants for the last few weeks now. Most of the population centres are under lockdown, everyone who can works from home, everyone else is getting desperate because bills, rent and debt payments are still piling up, whereas income has, in many cases, evaporated. 

In a nutshell, not the most inspiring circumstances for writing about the types of Chilean adventures we usually like to share with you. In fact, we've been keeping a rather low profile in the beautiful rural area of southern Chile where moved to in October of last year. We are barely moving around much and are well aware of our privileged circumstances which include, among others, being able to work remotely and not being crammed in with everyone in a place like Santiago.

Nonetheless, a little update is in order. It's the middle of winter, the first one in several years for us with proper snow and ice and frost. The volcanoes in our area have renewed their snow caps, after a very dry and warm summer.

The snow line even dropped down to where our cabin is located a few times, allowing us to play with the white stuff without having to go very far. Temperatures haven't dropped much below -5°C though, which means it has all been quite manageable. At one point we were running a bit low on firewood and the friendly neighbour who supplies us didn't quite make it all the way to our cabin because of all the snow. So we had to carry the cubic metre we had ordered (about 800 kg?) by hand the last 50 metres, which was about the worst crisis we had to deal with, thus far. Maybe not counting a few power cuts, and a part of our roof flying off during one stormy night (that one was easy to fix the following day, though). 

The southern-Chile winter weather is a bit of a mixed bag and most weeks we don't venture much beyond the boundaries of the property where we are accommodated, which, to be fair, is a spacious one. But whenever the sun does come out, which happens every now and then, the beauty and tranquility of the area is simply stunning. Below a few photos of a hike we did the other day not far from our cabin (link to higher res version here).

In other words, of all the places to wait out a global pandemic we count ourselves lucky to are where we are...