Aneya & Lauren: Temuco Pictures

Aneya: Street art in Temuco of a Mapuche woman.

Lauren: The detail here is incredible. It's right near the town square in Temuco.
Lauren: This statue was at the center of town. In the south, all the cities started with a square and a nearby church. At the top of the statue is a Machi, a female shaman of the Mapuche.
Aneya: Ah, the market. This place was huge and had everything you could imagine: fruit, nuts, vegetables, blue eggs, spices, just everything! Lauren was in heaven, of course.

Lauren: I bought all this stuff I couldn't eat, at least not right away. Dried lentils, these weird red and white beans called senoritas, white pepper, smoked merken (which I latter used on the lentils and was amazing!), and a wedge of merken mantequeso, an arsenal cheese. We needed some groceries, and this was fresh, it supported small farmers, and was just so cheap.

Blue eggs! And milk straight from the cow. Both intriguing and questionable after my stomach problems. There is also an abundance of quail eggs around here. You can go to the store (even in Santiago) and buy 24 quail eggs! It's crazy.

Aneya: Merken is like our new pepper here, we put it on everything.

Lauren: It's served instead of pepper at restaurants. It's really spicy and flavorful, so we've been all over it.
Lauren: The senorita.
Lauren: Daniela took us hiking on a hill right near the monastery. Pumas live in another nearby hill!
Aneya: Look at all that moss! So many huge, beautiful trees.

Lauren: Because it's so wet here, it was lichen, fungi heaven! There was some really cool fungi action going on here.
Aneya: Photographic evidence of me hiking. It's never been seen before.

Lauren: It happened! There are two witnesses.
Aneya: Daniela, our tour guide.
Aneya: Lauren, glowing in the sun.

Lauren: I was so happy to be able to comfortably walk again.
Aneya: Look how small Daniela is compared to the huge tree that's fallen down next to her!
Aneya: The view of Temuco, from the top of the hill.


-- Aneya & Lauren