National Holiday in Late Winter

Typical Banquete With My Family for the  National Holiday

September in Chile always is affected by its national holiday on 18th which usually is solemnised with a week of big celebrations, parties, asados, crapulence and ebriety. This year it was also affected by the return of winter which until than had been much too dry and warm. This for after already having been quite comfortable in August weather turned cold and rainy again and keeps being it. For me already being an old man as I seem to be who apart obviously had kicked over the traces when in Austria this meant and still means a time of instable health. The last three weeks I was assailed by various illnesses like bronchitis, sinusitis, cold which decided to stay with me quite insistently. So I spent most of this time at home if not in bed or in doctor's surgeries taking antibiotics, sleeping and self-pitying. Fortunately Inés as a multiple mother immediately adopted me as ninth child and took care for me and pampered me like only a mother can do it. So today I am definitely much better already only suffering from a simple rhinitis. Nevertheless we celebrated September 18th but just at our house with kids and friends. We had been really lucky for 18th being the only sunny and warm day in between long times of rainfall. So we had an asado at our house with beef which we freshly had received of our neighbour's former cow in a 25 kg piece of its shoulder. We played carrom in our garden, balanced on the slackline and had lots of fun. But Inés and I did not go out in the night for not being quite well both of us.

Being at home so many days gave me a lot of time to work in and for the sauna. Meanwhile it is fully running, this week of the national holiday being a first proof for its success. And we are quite content. For sure  there could be more clients always but we had folks as well in the sauna as in the cafeteria even asking for massages and yoga, services we just intend do offer in summer. And we have a couple of regular guests already as well. Most important of all that everybody who came was quite impressed and really liked the place, the food and the service. So word-of-mouth advertising machinery started working and as commonly known it is the best promotion you can get. Apart from that it is really comfortable and satisfying to work on your own in your proper business where you can arrange and do everything as you like it. Besides I like cooking and baking and offer good food to guests that they feel fine so I mainly just can be myself in the business. What more do I want?

For sure I also spent a lot of time not only with Inés but with the kids. We spent hours playing "Siedler",   cards and Carrom, which is the new common addiction in our house. I learned with them for college and even went to parents-teacher-meetings and participated in a parent's run where I, making a big show for all the kids out of it, came in second (!). Looks that old I am not yet.

On days not being that sick I already had been to the river as well a few times. Another work that really is fun to me. Just due to the dry winter we already have a water level as low as normally at the end of December which means we are going to have a very rocky and technical season. Well, as soon as tourists come and go rafting and canyoning I won't complain.

I just hope that this late winter ends soon and a real spring and summer are going to come shortly.

Back in Chile

 O'Higgins Park Santiago - One of the City's  Biggest Parks Close to  Downtown

After I had spent more than three great months in Austria I finally came back to Chile on August fourth. The flight was without any complications and delays. Only leaving Santiago airport this time took two hours because now they are x-raying all the luggage of incoming passengers (!) and most of the international flights are landing early morning as did mine. This caused a long queue at the x-raying machines. Well, finally I could Inés who was waiting in the arrival hall take in my arms again. As you can imagine the reunion was happy and intense. We spent a few days in Santiago, celebrating ourselves together again, enjoying the best of Chilean kitchen like seafood, beef and huge homemade burgers, Fantasilandia, a big amusement park in Santiago and watching Ice Age 4 in cinema which was quite a good training for me to get used to Spanish again.

Three days later we took the overnight bus to Pucón, where we arrived early morning. The reunion with the kids was quite emotional as well. Seems like they really missed me. My original plan to take some days to stay with the family in the beginning worked out perfectly due to an influenza virus brought by Mati, Inés’ grand son, that let stay in bed  half of the kids as well as myself for almost a whole week. So I had a lot of time to enjoy big family life again, in which fell Adriano’s 11^th birthday which for I made a typical Austrian Sacher Cake. These days also my Indian carom board which I had sent from Austria to use it as a new attraction in the cafeteria arrived. It is the Indian national game comparable to pool billiard played on a wooden board of about 1 per 1 meter which weighs 12 kilograms. The Chilean customs obviously did not know what it is and asked me for an official bill or a proof of any bank transaction thinking I would use it for commercial purpose. Only after I had sent them an explaining e-mail that this is all just private stuff they delivered the package. Now I am training my carom skills (which degreased a little bit over the last years) again together with the kids who are really fascinated by the game that can really be addictive.

Apart from that I started to prepare the sauna/cafeteria for the coming season. Inés really had done great work while I had been to Austria and made the place a comfortable and cosy one where someone would like to stay. Now it is up to me to make some last manual adaptations and improvements so that we can bear a lot of customers. So far once in a while people are coming and I already served my first customers which had been to a sauna the first time and had been quite pleased. So it seems people like it and now our place just has to get known. In September when is the Chilean national holiday and Pucón gets crowded the first time after the winter we will know more about the success of our business. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for it!

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.