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

Aneya & Lauren: Headed south.

Lauren: So today we embark on our journeys to the Lake District and magical island of Chiloe. We're going to meet Daniela and her family in Temuco, an area that has a large indigenous Mapuche and German population, as well as beautiful lakes, volcanoes, and day hikes. (Aneya got me to wear more earrings; I'm getting her to hike).

Aneya: We were originally going to extend the trip and go all the way to Patagonia, but that was called off, and for good reason. Daniela did a little research and determined that the specific area we wanted to go to would be quite a strenuous excursion. Two days of walking through a forest, camping outside, hiking through the middle of nowhere. That all sounds like hell to me. And Lauren thought we'd need more planning, so we decided against it. Thank god.

Lauren: We'll be staying at a nun monastery that Daniela put us in contact with, where the nuns make breakfast for travellers in the morning. We plan on doing some day trips with Daniela and her dad, including a little hiking. So excited!

Aneya: I'm afraid the nuns will take one look at me, declare me a sacrilegious sinner and send me packing! No, but really, the thought of nuns serving me breakfast just cracks me up, they're going to have pose for a picture whether they like it or not! It all sounds very quant and fairy tale-like, I'm quite intrigued.

Lauren: Lake District pictures below. Those snowy hills are volcanoes.

Lauren: Afterward we'll take a bus and a ferry to the magical island of Chiloe. It is inhabited by magical gnomes who can freeze you, give you a hump, steel young virginal women and goddesses who determine whether there will be seafood.

Aneya: Lauren has been talking about Chiloe for what feels like years. I'm just hoping it's nothing like Valparaiso, because I don't think she could handle another one of those excursions. But seriously, Chiloe sounds so mystical and mysterious, what with all the forest creatures and mermaids and gnomes. It sounds like a Disney movie just waiting to happen.

Lauren: Chiloe is plush with greenery, I am told, and has many houses that stand on stilts in the ocean. There are tons of tiny little churches speckled around the island. And we may be staying with the mayor! (Or not). Sleeping accommodations have not yet been arranged, but that's fine.

Among the events that take place on Chiloe is the minga where friends and neighbors gather around one house and drag it to a different location using bulls. Below is a video of the minga.

Aneya: It's all very exciting. I don't know the history as well as Lauren does, but it's rich in culture, and, apparently, potatoes! Daniela said her dad had just come back from a potatoe festival there, complete with those weird blue and red ones. That I could get used to.

Lauren: We'll check back in when we get back in about two weeks!

Aneya: I know you're all gonna miss us, but don't worry, we'll be back before you know it!

-- Aneya & Lauren