High Season and the End of a Neverending Story

The finally finished sauna and cafeteria

High season was intense, hard work but funny and succesful. This year I learned to raft with oars (two big paddles assembled by a metal frame to the boat - a very different kind of manoeuvring the boat)and guided a lot of canyoning so that I consider myself to be a real canyoning guide now. We had some tasty 'asados', a few good parties, fantastic summer weather all the time and lots of fun. Nevertheless at the end of the season all were happy that it had ended because it was daily hard work for almost two months. Everybody was eagerly awaiting quieter times but for Inés and me they had not yet come. We still had to repair our sauna to finally get it started. After intense, long searching we finally found a ´maestro´ who seemed to be able to do it well. We contracted him and indeed he did good work and finished all within ten days. Now we just had to organize all the final cleaning, permits, design, papers and so on which kept us three more weeks very busy. At the end we could happily celebrate inauguration on 15th of April. We did it inviting some friends to an 'asado', showing them everything and heating the sauna. Now just the grass of the lawn we planted has to grow and people have to frequent us regularly to make the business a success. We are very, very happy that we finally could finish that long and annoying chapter of the construction of the sauna. It really had reduced us to despair several times and had led more than once to discussions and arguments. So to terminate with all that was a big step forward.

Another one was that in February I finally got my permanent stay permit for Chile. The official channels had lastet half a year but it was worth waiting. With getting the permit there is another worry less. No more disillusioning administrative paperwork and barriers. No more deadlines to be missed. So now I can stay in Chile as long as I want to but nevertheless will spend the next months in Austria. Unfortunately Inés has to get the sauna started on her own now and I will just be informed about anything that happens with it. It´s a pity that I can not work in my own businnes now that it had costed me so much of nerves, time, afford and money but I already had decided to come back to Austria for work once more due to the insecurity of a future income before we had found the 'maestro' who finally repaired the roof of the sauna. Bad luck but nevertheless I am going to enjoy my time back home.

Besides the self-styled architect who had betrayed us with the construction of the sauna was sentenced to a fine and six months of social work in the penal trial. This is also a success for us because now everything is free for a most probably successful civil action which we already started.

Those were the last things that had happened in Chile. A few days ago I already arrived in Austria. I will be working on the river Salza in Upper Styria in May and June, have holidays in July and fly back to Chile at the beginning of August. I hope to see as many of you as possible in the next three month and all of you keep your faith in reading my Chilean adventures from august onwards.

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.

Good Times

The Bridal Couple

Fortunately not everything is going badly. We also had a lot of time to enjoy and celebrate these months. First of all Inés and I got married in November. To this occasion some of my freinds and my sister from Austria came to visit us. So I had the great chance to pass some time with good old friends from home, aspirating a little home spirit, having good conversations in mother tongue and showing them something of my new home. We climbed the volcano, rafted the river, went to hot springs, watched the Pacific Ocean (for bathing over there it still had been too cold), hiked in national parks in between ancient monkey puzzle tree forests and let us enchant of Valparaísos magical spirit. It was a great time which highlight was the wedding party on the pool, with lamb on a spit and lots of pisco (and for sure other drinks). The next day we have had quite a hangover but two days later cured the rest of it cooling down in the floods of Trancura River just to climbe the volcano the next day. Like always these good times always pass by much too fast and soon everybody had to go back to Austria and daily routine came back to my life. Sweetend by the arrival of Bernie, a rafting comrade from Austria who is visiting Chile right now. With him the Austrian spirit keeps on blowing through Pucón. Sadly he soon will go on travelling more south but the weeks with him were brilliant and today we will celebrating Christmas together with my family here. Having said this I wish you all a Merry Christmas! May it be blessed and unhurried!

Tough Times

While I was working during the winter the sauna and cafeteria were growing. As we step by step discovered unfortunately not in the way we had wished to. We had to argue a lot with the architect, some days nobody came to work, things were not done as we had decided it and so on. Finally we realized - unfortunately too late - that the whole construction was not worth the money. It was not well made, we had problems with rain water entering the construction, things from the original plan were missing, doors and frames badly installed and many more things unprofessionally done. Highlight of all that mess was that the roof of the sauna set on fire when we used it the second time. Inés had been in then with all the kids while I had been working. It was quite a shock. For Inés realizing that the roof burned being in there with all the kids and for me getting the phone call of Inés at work that the sauna burns. At least we had been lucky and could extinct the fire ourselves before it caused severe damage. As it turned out, the chimney of the oven had been installed wrong. So it came that the architect never terminated the construction because for sure after the incident with the fire we did not want him to go on with it. Instead we demanded him. During the investigations we found out that he not even had signed the contract with his real name. He was a professional cheater. That was a hard shock. In the following weeks we had been like paralyzed and did not know what to do next. I had invested a lot of money in the project and did not want to risk the rest of what I had in repairing the sauna not knowing if anyone would do it seriously. On the other hand we needed to finish the construction to get some money out of the business. At least I had my job over the winter months to earn my livings. Meanwhile we are trying to fix the sauna searching for someone confidential who will do this. Summer season is slowly beginning and so at least comes a good time of nice weather, sun, lots of work and asados. All the rest we will see soon….

Winter work



Winterwonderland a the skiing center

 Waxing all the skis and snowboards as well as cleaning all the boots for them in my work was like a journey through history of development of winter sports. There are different types of skis and bindings and especially the development of boots was intersting to watch. I found ancient leather snowboard boots, ski boots with just one buckle, back entrance, inflation system and many more of the trends that existed in the last 30 years. Sometimes I feel like in a ski museum at my work.

Meanwhile we overcame the two weeks of high season during which I worked 12 hours and sometimes more per day. It was a tough time but now winter holidays ended and it is much more calm again. Anyway working twelve hours here is not the same like working 12 hours in Europe. There had always been time to watch the matches of Chiles national football team at the Copa America and now and then I spent afternoons waiting at the skiing center to bring back tourists to town, bathing in the sun, enjoying the amazing outlook, reading a book or simply taking a nap in the car. For the winter here is quite cold and with lots of snow, I trained my winter driving style including mounting snow chains quite regularly these days. Sometimes I also could get out of the shop to do funny things like snow shoe trekking or - which so far was the best of it all - a tour with a snow quad in the Conguillio National Park. That was quite an adventure. I accompanied four Brasilean youngsters that they would not get lost in the snow. We went to the small town of Mellipeuco about 100 kms north of Pucón in car where we met Fernando the owner of a hostel over there and organizer of the quad trips. He is a likeable guy although at ten o´clock in the morning when we arrived he already had a good blood alcohol level. A quite wrinkled face with a big red nose in it, the typical smell of his breath and a damned slow articulation for a Chilean showed that this does not seem to happen only that day. We drove with the quads on a hanger to the national park where we unloaded them and started the trip. When we reached there it started snowing heavily and so we drove through an amazing winterly volcanic landscape. Unfortunately visibility got worse and snow even more so that we had to turn back after about one and a half hours. Half way back the crawler of one of the vehicles came off and we had to fix it in the windy snow flurry, lifting the quite heavy quad on one side. It took Fernando quite a while to fix it with his cold numb fingers. Finally we reached totally frozen but impressed by the winter wonderland we had seen at the park entrance again. After that we went to the Truful-Truful falls, a beautiful cascade of the river by the same name nearby. Finally we got a Pizza at the Hiostel before we went back to Pucón. On the way back we came into a snow flurry again in which driving for the young Brasilean was quite an adventure. When snow kept lying on the road he asked me: "This is snow now?"

In July Inés' mother and sister visited us. We spent some nice days together, cooking Austrian food, eating in fine restaurants and visiting the Huife hot springs. They are said to be the most noble hot springs in the area but I was quite dissapointed. It is a big thermal center with spa, sauna and restaurant. The problem with it is that Chileans hardly know to offer service, so the best infrustructure is useless if you can´t enjoy it however for the total absence of any service. Nevertheless the women enjoyed and I will just go back to my beloved rustic, basic natural pool hot springs the next time.

Inés due to all the kids being at home for their winter holidays for two weeks got quite stressed after her mum had gone back to Santiago again. So we decided to sent her on some holidays herself. These days she is at Bahía Inglesa a noble beach resort in the north relaxing from home at early summer like temperatures while I am sitting in the office with a cold staring into the rain outside.

Small Journey, Big Journey and Some Work

The Small Hot Springs

As it turned out bad luck had not already finished with my tonsilitis. From the penicillin I got a viral infection in my mouth which forced me to eat only liquid stuff for two more days and was even more painful than the tonsilitis itself. Finally I lost 4 kg in just three days. From all the tablets I had to take against all the attacks on my poor body I got stomach problems and so had to diet some more days. Finally I had been so ravenous that the first meat after all that which I had taking a dinner out in Pucón with Inés tasted like heaven!

Finally healthy again I went with a friend to some free of charge hot springs close to Pucon. You reach them in half an hour by car and a steep 5 minutes walk down to Liucura River. There just at the bank of the river is one small pool formed by a natural rock face and a concrete wall. Because it already had been dark I can´t tell you anything about the view of the surrounding landscape but the night sky with millions of bright stars and the sound of the running river were amazing. The beer we had brought under these circumstances tasted especially sweet and smooth.

My next journey brought me to Santiago with Inés. We went there to meet her mother who lives in Italy and is on holiday in Chile right at the moment. So I got to know my future mother in law. She´s a likeable, little and funny person. Unfortunately weather conditions had been quite bad with rain, wind and low temperatures (one morning snow in the Andes range almost had fallen as low as the first suburbs of the town - never saw Santiago that winterly). This in combination with not heated houses let me suffer of the chill all the time we had been there. When we were in the house of Ines' sister where we usually stay in Santiago I was just sitting next to the only gas oven that exists, wrapped in blankets reading a book or the newspaper like a crabby grandfather. Fortunately we daily went to the city. One day to buy cloth for my wedding suit and clothes for Inés to wear at the marriage (we are going to be a damned pretty bridal couple), the other day to take the rare chance for us to go to the cinema. We watched 'X-Men'. It was the first movie I did see not in the original English version and Spanish subtitled but Spanish synchronized. Although I have not seen the first part of 'X-Men' I understood quite well and got the meaning of the movie which of I was a little proud.

After three days with big parts of Inés' family (which always is quite chaotic and not really relaxing) we had been quite happy to go back to our own warm and cosy house in Pucón but fate did not want to let us come back that easily. We missed the bus that left at night and so had to stay one more night in Santiago. The next day we had to take a bus connection with changing the bus, because their had not been a direct bus to Pucón during the day. Finally we reached there at midnight, tired but happy!

The next day I started working for the winter season. Now I am waxing skis and snowboards for the next three months. After working  the whole day  standing my back hurt terribly in the evening that I nearly could not move anymore. As it seemed I had caught a chill of my back in Santiago and for sure the long odyssey in the bus had done its bit as well. In the night I could sleep with pain killers only and the next days wore my kidney belt for the motorbike to warm and support my back to bear working the whole day. Meanwhile I can stand upright again and already gave my first skiing lesson (which I am doing too as well as guiding snowshoe hikes). My student was a Venezuelan woman who had touched snow the first time in her life that day. It was great fun and let me go for skiing again which I have not done for several years.

Home Adventures

Eruption of volcano Puyehue

Just a week after our engagement we had the next celebration. It was Inés´ birthday. In the afternoon we celebrated with the children giving Inés her presents, eating the cake and the usual birthday things. In the evening and almost all night long we did the usual adult party in Pucón with some of Inés´ friends. We had so much fun that we just forgot about going home but paid the price for that the next day on which neither Inés nor I could hardly move.

While the workers kept constructing our sauna/cafeteria I constructed another woodshed because the old one did not survive the rearrengement of our lot due to the construction and had been broken down. So I had to pile almost all the wood for the winter another time with the effect that I almost can not see any more fire wood if it is not burning inside the oven warming the house. Well at least we will not run out of fire wood for the rest of the winter especially because so far it seems to be a not too cold one. That is why up to now the construction in our garden progressed uninterruptedly. Until this week which was the one of the bad incidents. First of all volcano Puyehue erupted heavily covering wide parts of Argentinian Patagonia (although the volcano itself is on the Chilean side of the Andes - that's how nature cares about political borders.) Thankfully no one was injured or killed just more than 3000 people around the volcano are still evacuated and daily life in the affected areas in Argentina broke almost down like if there would be heavy snowfall in any major town in Central Europe. For volcano Puyehue is about 200 kms south of Pucón we had never been in danger here and could be astonished about the incredible pictures of the eruption Chilean TV since then broadcasts daily.

At the same day there had been reported a small tornado in Villarrica, the town on the other shore of Villarrica Lake. This leaded to another evacuation  and unfortunately caused severe damage which affected us although the tornado itself never came close to Pucón. Though the workers of our building site live in Villarrica and their houses had been partially destroyed. So the last days they could not come because they had to take care about their families and repair their houses.

Apart from that Inés got heavy back pain which forced here to stay in bed two days. She has problems with her spinal discs which became acute what according to her happens regularly in winter and so did not frighten her as much as me seeing her there in the bed almost like paralized. So I took care of her these days but soon there came my revenge although before there waited another adventure for us. The next day we had a chimney fire in our house. I had been down in Pucòn and Inès had been in the house with her oldest son Pablo. Fortunately the workers that day still had been there on our lot  because they saw the fire coming out of the chimney up on the roof of the house. Otherwise Inès and Pablo inside would not even had noticed it. They knocked the door and told Inès who was quite surprised and frightened about the fire. Fortunately we have an extinguisher at home (since the roof of the house already burned two years ago) with which one of the workers climbed up the roof and put out the fire. As fate would have it this day I had left my cellphone at home because it was out of charge so Nelson, Inès' ex-husband, searched and found me down in Pucòn when I was just ordering lunch in a cafe. When I came back to the house a few minutes later, everything was full with the dry chemical of the extinguisher and Inès and Pablo already diligently cleaning. Luckily apart from the dust absolutely nothing had happened thanks to the quick reaction of the workers who really safed our house (and got an extra beer for that). The whole afternoon we spent cleaning up the mess inside and the chimney again so finally nothing left than a big fright. 

The next day I suddenly got 40 degrees C feaver, pain all over my body, feeling of vomitting and several other symptoms of influenza. So now I was a nursing case for Inès. Because the feaver did not recede on the third day Inés brought me to the hospital where they told me that it was not an influenza at all but a tonsilitis. As far as I remember I never ever had that in my life and had to become 34 years old to suffer of it. Could have missed that one out for sure. In the hospital they put me on an infusion gave me two huge injections of penicillin (one of them right into my bottom which that for still hurts) and send me home again with some obviouously really effective tablets.

Writing this I am at home in bed now curing myself. It had been my first day without fever since then so it seems the upcoming week I will be back to (social) life again. At least I did not miss that much because just these days arrived the winter with heavy rainfalls and storms so the bed had been the cosiest place to be in  anyway. Nevertheless I hope we had enough adventure for some time and I can start working for the winter season in one or two weeks without any further surprises.