lakes and volcanoes

Well, we´re now in the Chilean lake district. The lake crossing was so scenic, we almost got immune to the natural beauty after a while! It´s nice being back in the old country again, with people saying "po" at the end of every sentence. There´s a lot of Germans in this area (Swiss also), they clearly love it, and with good reason. It looks kinda like this:



Chile is proving a lot more expensive than Argentina. Chileans, around here anyway, also seem, controversially perhaps, a good deal chubbier than their neighbours (despite all that steak, it looks like the Chilean appetite for cake and empanadas gives them the edge! ) Becka is struggling to maintain her boycott of Nestle products in Chile, by the way. They even run the bottled water!



In Puerto Octay (population 2,500!), or to be precise, a coupla miles out of town, we stayed at the incredible Zapato Amarillo, in THIS house...










We couldn´t quite get over it. It also featured the most comfortable bed we are likely to encounter on our entire trip (and possibly our lives):




We also had our first ever hitch hiking adventure there - it was only down to the town, and with a cheerful old local lady, so not exactly fraught with danger, but exciting nonetheless!



Oh, here´s a picture of me giving respect to Bernardo O´Higgins, who liberated Chile from the Spanish (not on his own, obviously).


We really didn´t want to leave Puerto Octay for Valdivia at all, but once we got there, we got quite into it, once we found an excellent cafe bar called Moro, which saved us from having to go to Schopp Dog (for a schopp = draught beer). However, we then got careless over our choice of dining establishment and wound up having the WORST MEAL OF OUR TRIP so far... dunno what the restaurant was called (it might not have actually had a name), but we should have smelled a rat when we turned out to be the only people in there all night... Becka´s "mariscal" (seafood broth) was so salty as to be inedible, and my "pollo al jugo" was, frankly, a disgrace. I would rather forget all about our starter...
Would´ve been less infuriating had the waitress been able to grasp the difference between fizzy and still mineral water, or between half bottles and quarter bottles of wine... Maybe we should have gone to Schopp Dog after all. Still, you move on, which is what we did, to Pucon, (again, absurdly attractive), considering going to some thermal spas tomorrow. Then it´s off to Concepcion to meet up with my uncle Tito...