Chile - STILL In the Lake District

By Dana

Mala Suerte (Bad Luck)

This section of our adventure started with a big dose of bad luck.  After dropping off Brent's parents at the airport in Puerto Montt, we headed to the bus terminal, with plans to head far south to Patagonia the next day.  The moment Brent's parent's stepped onto the plane, our luck seemed to completely change.  Our "perfect weather good luck charms" had just left forever and the rain came (literally) as everyting started falling apart. 

The fun all started at the bus terminal.  We had 3 weeks to enjoy our travels in the south before Brent's brother Kyle was coming, and to our disbelief every bus headed that direction was booked until he arrived.  We quickly realized we were trying to travel at the same time everry Chilean resident was trying to sneak in one last summer vacation before the start of the school year, which began at the beginning of March.  

That night we found ourselves in an overpriced, sad, lonely hostel in Puerto Montt without a kitchen, internet, or even anyone around to point you towards a bathroom.  We had little money during the height of tourist season, nowhere to go, and three weeks to kill.  

We tried to be excited about our fresh veggie salad dinner that night. . . 

. . . but this is more what we felt like.  

The next day we hopped a bus to the island of Chiloe, more than anything just to get out of sad, depressing, rainy Puerto Montt.  Yes, John and Kathy it was raining. . . I still don't know how you got perfect weather the entire time you were here.  

Mejor Suerte (Better Luck)

With the change of scenery in Chiloe, things started to look a little bit sunnier (both literally and figuratively).  We found a lovely hostel owned by an amazing family.  We even had a kitchen to use and a TV in our room!  It was a great luxury to have during the Winter Olympics.  

Here's what we had for 2 consecultive nights while we were in Chiloe.  Thanks Mom and Dad Teske for providing one of Brent's favorite 'American' meals of Velveeta Mac & Cheese.  

Although it was a bit out of our budget, we decided to stay at the same hostel for a few days to catch up on real life things back home, check on Brent's college appliations, catch up on sleep and relax, and search for a new WWOOFing farm to stay at.  In between our WWOOFing job search, which consisted of me sitting at a 'Centro de llamadas' and making tons of calls daily, we were able to explore what the city of Castro in Chiloe had to offer.  

We passed some beautiful, bright houses

Here's me in front of another one 

We visited what I liked to call the "Minnesota-Vikings-Breast-Cancer-Awareness-Month Church"

And of course we went and saw the PALAFITOS, which the city of Castro and the island of Chiloe are known for.  

PALAFITOS are houses built on stilts above the water.  

If you are wondering, as I did, how in the world they build these, during a morning jog I passed some houses that looked like this.  I speculate they probably build the foundation when the tide is out.  

And you guessed it. . . 

. . . we ate more blackberries!

Thank goodness for those blackberries. . . 

. . . as we were terrified we might not find a place to work in the coming weeks (which would put us WAY over budget) we lived off of Mac & Cheese, berries, and this purchase while we were on the island of Chiloe.  

Suerte (Luck)

After two days of calling, about 40 calls made, and still 0 availability for WWOOFing anywhere on the island of Chiloe, we finally had a stroke of luck.  

We finally gave up with Chiloe and decided to try to find a place off the island.  We saw a farm listed online that appeared to be in a convenient location for hopping the border to Argentina and meeting up with Kyle (Brent's brother) in a couple weeks.  The description though didn't instill a lot of confidence in us.  It was two poorly written, nearly non-intelligible sentences with almost zero information about the place and the work. . . but at this point we had nothing to loose.  

We gave the owner a call, and he immediately said that Brent and I were welcome to come.  It was such a relief to finally have a place to stay!  Even though we had no idea what we would be getting into, we celebrated with some ice cream on the coast. 

This is what we finally felt like!

The next day we were able to sneak in a day hike to Parque Nacional Chiloe on the Pacific Coast before heading out of town.  It was a beautiful, relaxing day.  

We hiked through a gorgeous bog

And into a beautiful old growth forest. . .

. . . with lots of dense vegetation and trees. . . 

. . . to climb over. . . 

. . . and under.

Then we hiked out to the coast

It was a beautiful day to enjoy a nice picnic lunch in the sand

And then enjoy the water

 

Buena Suerte (Good Luck)

The next day we followed the directions we were given to our new WWOOFing destination.  One of the things I love about WWOOFing is that it takes you to places far off the beaten path, places that most tourists don't even know exist, let alone visit. 

It's always a great feeling when you walk up to a line of busses as a 'gringo', with every bus driver trying to get you to hop on their 'touristy destination' bus and announce that you're looking for the bus that goes to a place like 'Santa Elvira.'  The "what are you going there for" astonishment is priceless and will never get old.  :)

Santa Elvira isn't a town, isn't even a house, it's literally the end of the road in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  There's one bus that goes into the city in the morning and 1 to 2 busses that go back in the afternoon.  That bus is truly the lifeline for the people living out there.  I felt like I was on a UPS truck with packages getting dropped off at every intersection to people waiting along the road.  I've never seen people so happy to see a bus or groceries before.  

After traveling down a dirt road towards the Andes Mountains for nearly 3 hours we arrived at our destination with only our bus driver and a few other passengers still on the bus.  

Our bus departed, leaving us hours from civilization

The beautiful and scarry thing about WWOOFing is that there are so many unknowns when you're going to a new place.  You don't know where you're going to sleep, what you're going to eat, or even if there would be a way to get out of there if you wanted to.  All you can do is sit and wait for what life is going to bring.  

This is where we waited, hoping for a pickup later that afternoon

As you can probably tell by the title of this section, we were more than pleasantly surprised with where we ended up.  A bit late, but better than never, the owner of the farm showed up.  After a 45 minute drive down a dirt road into his property, with a stop to see some pigs and another to see a waterfall, we were finally there.  

Some of the new little piggies we stopped to see on the way into the farm.  They really liked Brent's pants for some reason.  These are a few of the 70 or so pigs on the farm.  

The waterfall we passed on the way into the farm. . . I think I went back there just about every day afterwards to hang out in this peaceful place.  

Near the house we stayed in. - It was truly a paradise!

Not only was the area indescribably beautiful, but we were incredibly happy there with the work, accomodations, meals, and our time off.   

We stayed in a beautiful lodge.  The place could house 18 people, but as there were only about 6 volunteers total there during our entire stay, we all had our own room.  

The outside was beautiful as well.  We even had chickens that lived in the front yard to fertilize the grass.  We moved the chicken 'house' to a new area on the lawn every morning.  

This was the view of the lake, Lago Rupanco, from the house.  :)  :)  :)

We were there during harvest season, which meant digging lots and lots of potatoes.  We spent about 6 hours out in the potato field every day 'mining for gold' as I liked to call it, working from 8am-2pm.  

The view from the field was awesome.  

Our puppy and kitty friend would join us every day.  When they weren't fighting with each other, you could usually find them like this.  Can you spy the kitty?

:)

We found a couple slimey friends as well.  

Speaking of slimey . . . about every 20th potato you'd get a nice gooey, bubbly, stinky surprise!  This one was extra ripe!

Papas!

Here's a love letter I wrote to Brent.  :)

Brent and I could usually fill about 10 of these bags (that you see in the background) together on a good day.  

Some volunteers we were with got sick of the potato digging, but I honestly loved it.  There's something special about digging around in the dirt all day, and the conversations we all had were awesome.  Occasionally we'd mix it up a bit by adding a few hours of apple or berry harvesting at the end of the day.  

Brent shaking the apple tree branches to get the ripe fruit to fall

Apples!

Mmmmm.

Picking blackberries once again

There were so many berries, 4 of us were able to fill a 5 gallon bucket in little over an hour!

Brent started it....

With 2 burlap sacks of apples and thousands of berries, we made lots of cobbler, crisp, apple sauce. . . 

. . . and homemade jam. 

We also had all kinds of fresh milk from the cows on the farm (that you see boiling on the left), which we used to make yogurt and all sorts of other goodies.  

One day Aubin (an awesome volunteer from France) and I made cheese!  We managed to be successful even after our thermometer came to a shattering end.  

After bringing the milk to a nearly boiling temperature, we added vinegar and salt to separate the curd from the whey.  

Then we drained off the liquid and were left with lots of yummy cheese!

The food here was amazing!  All the ingrediants were super fresh, whether harvested from the garden or bought at the market.  We even made fresh squeezed orange juice and had unlimited honey from their bees.  On top of everything else, we happened to have a group of volunteers from all over the world that loved to cook!

We had Australian style barbeque wings, made by Luke from Australia. 

Authentic potato pancakes made by Sandra from Germany.  

Crepes made by our expert French cooks.  Aubin and Louise made ridiculously amazing food.  

They even let me add the secret ingredient, an orange liquor that Louise brought with her all the way from France.  Thankfully I didn't screw it up.  

Super sweet and generous Louise, one of the kindest people we've ever met traveling, also generously shared some delicious, sweet hazelnut spread she had also brought with her from home.  It was the perfect addition to the French Crepes.  :)

I could go on all day about the food, but I'll simply leave you with one more picture of a lunch Louise made that gives you an idea of the incredible meals we enjoyed here.  

Salmon with rosemary and potatoes from the garden, stuffed tomatoes, homemade hummus with veggies from the garden, homemade applesauce, quinoa salad, fresh bread, and lemon tea from the tree outside.  

When we weren't working, cooking or eating, we got to relax.  Here were some of the highlights of our afternoons off everyday.  Even without a bit of phone connection or internet, we found endless ways to keep ourselves busy.  

Swimming in the lake, relaxing on the beach or sailing with my good friend Aubin

Hiking up the road. . . I loved the beautiful, huge waterfall on the right.  It's hard to see from the picture, but just picture Paradise Falls from the movie UP.  :)  We went on our own adventure to go see it on a day off.  We hiked along the shore for about 2.5 hours and then had to swim the last bit to make it to the base of the falls (that's why I don't have picutres of it).  The sky was clear blue, the water crystal clear and calm, and the water was falling from hundreds of feet above our heads as we swam up to it.  It was probably one of the most invigorating feelings I've ever had and one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.  I'll never forget it.  ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!

Going on walks and runs to new beautiful vistas of the lake

Hikes in the beautiful old growth rainforest on the property - some of the trees here were over 500 years old!

Reading in the hammock or doing yoga with Blake (a volunteer from Utah who happened to conveniently be a yoga instructor)

Taking a nap

Having awesome conversations with the other volunteers or the owner Greg (guy in the right back) or playing an old fashioned game together

Watching baby hummingbirds grow up - we actually got to see one of them fly away from the nest (we think for the first time)!

Speaking of hummingbirds. . . one day I got to rescue one that had flown into the house.  It was trying to break its way out of the big, high window in the house, so I climbed up on a chair (that may or may not have been on top of a table) and gently grabbed him. 

Once I brought him outside, he just sat on my hand.  :)  The hummingbird was incredibly light.  This was probably one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.  The only casualty that day was a single feather you can barely see, stuck to the palm of my hand.  

And one of the biggest highlights of all was relaxing in the wood-heated hot tub at the end of the day. . . 

. . . with an amazing view of the sunset over the lake.  

It sure is amazing how your 'suerte' can change just like that.  Wishing you all 'muy buena suerte' in your own crazy adventures of life.  :)