Happy New Year!!!

I wish everybody a Happy New Year!!! May it be a succesful, prosperous, healthy and funny one!!!

I am going to dive deep into the big party wave that overcomes Pucon every New Years Eve and hope that it spits me out again somewhen after my birthday although I have no idea when it will be. So don't be scared when you do not hear or read of me the next days. I will be very fine anyway......

Good luck and keep on dreaming and laughing!!!

Visit from Home

With Bernd on the Top of Volcano Villarica

Soon after we had come back from San Martìn de los Andes, Bernd, a friend of mine which I know from my studies at Leoben university, came to spend his holidays in Chile and stayed in Pucòn for about ten days. It was a great pleasure for me to meet a friend from home, speaking Austrian dialect and warming up old stories of student times. Weather had been unsettled the first days but then it changed to sunny, warm summer weather so we could do some nice things together. Of course we had been on the river doing rafting as well as hydrospeed. (This is to swim down the river in a thick neoprene suit, with fins and a kind of bodyboard.) Doing the hydrospeed Bernd had to serve me as a guinea pig because I was practicing for the exam to become a hydrospeedguide which took place a few days later. We made a tour of the region trying to visit a classical open air concert organized by an Austrian tenor living close to Pucòn. Unfortunately we just could leave Pucòn in the later afternoon and when we arrived there the concert had already been over. Obviously they had given us the wrong time of its beginning. Nevertheless we had a nice trip through the lovely landscape and were recompensed with an amazing sunset over 'Calafquèn Lake'. One evening we had a delicious asado at our house and highlight of the visit for sure was climbing active volcano 'Villarica' (2847m above sea level) just out of Pucòn. The first day we tried it we already could see the top from the starting point of the tour but could not ascend because wind was blowing all the smoke of the crater right into the ascending route. So we had to turn back to Pucòn and that for did canyoning that day. The next day we had been lucky and could make it up to the top. Over there we made a turn around the whole crater with its diameter of 200m so we had an amazing 360 degrees panoramic view over all the surrounding landscape with its numerous volcanoes, lakes, mountains and glaciers. Like the first time when I climbed that mountain again it was quite an impressive experience to stand on the top of an active volcano looking into the crater and thus inside the Earth. The funniest thing about the whole event is going down what you are doing sliding on your bottom through the snow.  So we spent some really relaxing and amusing days and to be true I got a little sentimental when I left Bernd at the bus station the morning he went back to Santiago.

Anyway their had been things for me to do. I had to practice more for the hydrospeed exam. Which I did but unfortunately without success. On monday I loused it up quite badly. It had been a day on which literally anything went wrong that could go wrong. So far I do not have the official results but if they let me pass I strongly had to doubt the competence of the examiners. Well, so I just will keep going down the river in my rubber boat which isn't that bad neither.

Inès meanwhile opened up the restaurant and I already had some delicious meals over there. So far they do not have cuisine a la càrte but only one or two daily set meals. Their speciality is grilled lamb and they serve a very interesting and unique to Pucòn mix of Chilean, Mapuche and Mediterranean kitchen. Frequency of guests already had been okay and they have quite some reservations for Christmas and New Years Eve. So we are hoping that one works well and with it our shop inside.

So far the latest news from the end of the world. I wish everybody of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Take care, take your time and keep on laughing!!!

Short Holiday in Argentina

Argentinian Pampa with Volcano Lanin

A long time you have not read of me because I was quite busy with lots of things. First of all I (almost) finished our bathroom tiling, installing a bath tub and the wash basin and terminating the floor. As well I renovated the children´s bathroom where from I removed our bathtub. The children now have to be content with a shower only. What for I had planned about two weeks took me more than one month. When living in Chile with Inés and nine children European mind based timetables do not work. Now there are just some details like a towel rail missing and I can´t see tiles anymore. At least those not installed yet.

Because Inés is also quite busy with the restaurant and season is coming soon - which means we hardly won´t have any time together - we decided to take some holidays of house, kids and work. Only the two of us together a few days without any things to do. We had planned and postponed the trip for almost a months. One time Inés had to work, another time someone got ill (actually first Inés´oldest son Pablo then Inés and finally myself had been caught by an influenza virus) or there accured any other problems. Finally we managed to travel to San Martín de los Andes in Argentina right across the Andes range for two days.

San Martín is the Argentinian equivalent to Pucón situated right in between the Andes on a scenic lake. We started the trip with a delay of almost three hours because that day there had been a simulation of an eruption of the volcano in Pucón what for all public travel in the morning had been postponed. We went to the 'Mamuil Malal' pass on the food of volcano 'Lanin' which marks the border to Argentina. The road up there leads through the 'Villarica National Park' where it is just a gravel road meandering through dense native forest coming around scenic lakes and waterfalls. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere you come to the border stations where you have to do all the bureaucratic routines first to leave Chile and then to enter Argentina. Waiting in the line you can enjoy a tremendous view of nearby volcano 'Lanin' (although from the height of the pass there are still more than 2500 metres of altitude to the peak missing). When you passed the border controls and crossed the Andes range the landscape changes drastically. The Andes work like a meteorological divide and while on the Chilean side rain fronts coming in from the Pacific Ocean are caught and rain down creating that evergreen dense forests on the Argentinian side there is the 'Pampa' a dry grassland with only few low vegetation. You keep going down a nevertheless awe inspiring valley on a soon again well paved national highway that is only interrupted by adventurous weak looking bridges now and then. Finally we arrived at San Martín found a nice room and went to discover the town. We had our first Argentinian steak accompanied by ´Malbec´ the most typical Argentinian red wine.

The next two days were really relaxing. We slept as long as we wanted to in the morning and did just typical tourist program as we had been in the mood to do. We made a boat trip on 'Lácar' Lake to a small deserted beach area called 'Quila Quina', where you can find a restaurant, a Mapuche settlement and a scenic waterfall. After a walk over there we went back with the boat going for dinner, having venison this time another delicacy of the region again accompanied by a rich 'Malbec'. The next day we made a city tour with an original old London double decker bus some young guys are running over there. We had not been sure what it will be like, boarding the bus with just couples of rich Argentinian retirees but where positively surprised. That guys really showed you the town in an interesting, amusing way reviving town's early days and history as well as introducing you to the surrounding giving you a lot of interesting facts about the region and its history, geography and biology. Once again we ended the day with a delicious dinner of meat.

We came back to Pucón really relaxed and a little sad that it just had been two days of vacations, starting a vegetarian diet after that enormous amounts of meet we have had these days. Now we are awaiting the season and what it will bring to us. Let's hope nothing bad!