Puerto Varas, Frutillar & Cochamo, Chile.



Kara says:

Chile's lake district. Very pretty lakes and mountains and allegedly four volcanoes though the cloud only lifted enough for us to see two. Perfect domed volcanoes covered in snow, with a rim of cloud just below the summit, on the edge of a lake - can't really get better than that. They're still active and in fact this area also gets it's fair share of earthquakes. The largest earthquake ever recorded was here in 1960. They had I think five earthquakes above 8 on the Richter scale within a couple of days and the final biggie was so big they had to add some numbers to the top of the Richter scale to account for it (veracity warning: I have not yet checked this fact on google, it comes courtesy of Chilean guide on the ferry).

This area also has a very strong German influence. The area wasn't settled by Europeans until the 1880s (have I written about this before? Getting deja vu.) because of the strong disapproval of the local Mapuche tribe. And even then only the Germans were brave enough to settle the area so now it's very tidy and clean, has lots of good chocolate and beer and very german-looking buildings. The first evening we arrived in Puerto Varas (pretty, German-looking village on the edge of a lake looking across at the volcano) we heard an oom-pah-pah band as we were walking to town and lo and behold what was waiting for us in the plaza? An Octoberfest tent! Sometimes the universe just all comes together perfectly. It had more of a family atmosphere than the true German beer tent but not a bad effort and with lots of the local micro-breweries selling their wares - the winner (of our personal tasting competition) was a pale ale from the Cork Brewpub of Puerto Varas complete with a shamrock on the label. See photo of me holding my beer (the little one) and Karl's (the big one) 'cause I always seemed to pick the ones that came in little glasses. The locals even took to the floor to dance to German tunes played with a little more swing than normal and the music seemed to have more of an influence on hip movements than I think the Germans would approve of.



Then we went for a day to Frutillar - a pretty German-looking village on the edge of a lake with a view to the volcano. It's even more German-looking than Puerto Varas. See photos of houses. It's very cute but slightly surreal to see this village in Chile rather than Bavaria. Also photo of Karl practicing to be an old man sitting on a bench enjoying the view with a nice cup of tea.





Another day we went to Cochamo - a pretty, less German-looking village on the edge of a lake with a view to mountains. Tiny fishing village in a stunning location on the edge of a narrow lake with steep mountains all around. We picked the wettest day the world has ever seen to go so the views of the mountains came and went. We walked around with the feeling that the curtains were twitching and the next day the conversation between neighbours would be "who were those two strangers walking around yesterday - that wasn't Juan's eldest home from Santiago was it?". Photos of their little wooden church, Karl taking refuge from the rain and enjoying a nice cup of tea, house, house and pigs, me and ducks - it was a good day for ducks.





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