A Cultural Journey

Llanquihue Lake with the 'Teatro del Lago'

December was already quite busy on the river and the summer weather from November continued. The first half of January - like every year - was a little lazy and before the real high season started on 15th, Inés and I went on a small motorcycle trip to the south to relax a few days before I would have to work without a single break until the end of February. It was Inés´ Christmas present. She always had had the wish to watch an opera once, which in Chile is quite an upper class event. Last year in the small borough of Frutillar at the shore of Llanquihue Lake a concert hall had been opened, mainly to house their yearly musical festival but with program all year round. Their first opera ever performed there now in January was „The Magic Flute“ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I hired a Honda Falcon 400ccm Motorcycle from a friend and we started a three day trip. I enjoyed driving a bike again after almost two years, especially because the journey brought us to places I had not known so far. On the first day we left towards Ranco Lake bypassing the scenic lakes of Calafquén and Panguipulli. First it was all paed road but the further we came from the densely populated planes and towards the Andes Range the more gravel roads we had to face. Driving them especially with a pillion was quite an adventure for an asphalt spoiled European rider like me. But it was a good practice for future trips because here in Chile you have to face gravel roads regularly. Nevertheless we went ahead fast and so had time to circle Ranco Lake to the Eastern side. There the Andes mount up quite steeply directly from the lake. Not for nothing this part of Chile’s South in Central Europe is generally known as the Switzerland of Chile. Scenic lakes at the edge of the Andes, surrounded by planes and gentle hills on their Western side, while steep hills and bold mountains mount up on their Eastern sides. The deeper we drove into the mountains the more the landscape turned into a black and white scenery and the sun disappeared behind a huge monochrome grey cloud. We had come close to Puyehue Volcano which started to erupt last June which brought him into worldwide medias for a few weeks but meanwhile is still spitting lots of ashes everyday leaving the surrounding population buried under a constant layer of ashes hiding the sun for months.

We stopped for the night in the small village of Lago Ranco where we found a friendly, familiar hostel. Although it was already a little further off the cloud of ashes, the black motorcycle had turned into grey after the night in front of the house covered with a layer of ashes. The next day we went on to Frutillar. We decided to take mainly paed roads to relax our bottoms after all the gravel of the day before. So we soon reached the idyllic Llanquihue Lake with its amazing panoramic view of four volcanoes. We checked in in a small family run hostel where we had a shower and changed for the opera. The concert hall called “Teatro del Lago” is an impressive general purpose building including several concert and exhibition halls a cafeteria a restaurant and a shop constructed on the shore reaching over the water of the lake. The performance of the opera was in its original German version which I liked very much. German speaking as well was at least half of the audience. You saw typical German clothes and heard German dialects all over the theatre. It seemed like every German/Swiss/Austrian living in Chile or visiting it at that time had come there. It was like breathing native air to me. When we left the theatre after the performance the four volcanoes on the other side of the lake were illuminated in breathtaking colours by the sunset. It was a worthy ending of the spectacle. We finished the day in one of the many restaurants offering good German influenced food, because Frutillar was the centre of the German immigration to Chile in the second half of the 19th century. The next day we drove back to Pucón taking a bath in Panguipulli Lake on the road. So we started relaxed and filled up with impressions into the high season to come.