Okay, moment's up! Let's get back on the road, okay?

Not too long ago we had the good fortune to take a trek up the Volcano Villarrica with a new friend of ours (and if you happen to be reading this, "Hi" Don Roberto!), in order to get up close and personal and see for ourselves the 360º panorama of what should be called "peering into forever," since the air is clear and seems so pure. One truly can see very long distances for the many mountain ranges in this area are all on display. The word "breathtaking," is a BIG understatement and it is not due to lack of oxygen to the brain, either! What you see is kilometer after kilometer of mountains and lakes with snowcapped volcanoes interspersed like rare gemstones on a cape of luminous silk. 

About two-thirds of the way up the volcano, stands the remains of gigantic tree trunks. These trees look to be at least 30 meters tall with a diameter in excess of two to three meters! We can only assume they are the sole remnants of a large volcanic eruption in the early 1960's. In the coming years, this particular location above and behind Pucón, will be busy with construction crews, all of whom will be actively involved in the construction of the proposed and newly funded $50 million dollar winter resort area.

This new resort complex will assuredly be an instant success! For years now, many people flock to the six chairlifts that have been in place upon the mountain for more than a few years. Many days when it is cloudy and/or raining like the dickens at the elevation of the Lago Villarrica, the sun is brilliantly shining on fresh, crisp snow that is just begging to be played in skied and/or snowboarded on! 

The high amount of annual rainfall at the base of the volcano means that the annual snowfall up on the sides and into the cone of the Volcano Villarrica is just the spot for world class skiing or snowboarding. One can even collect some dried bamboo along the way up the mountain to make a couple of good, strong trekking sticks or ski poles, if you accidentally left yours back at the hotel….. Nothing is quite as nice, lightweight or fine as a strong branch of dried bamboo. Bamboo, surprisingly enough, is an evergreen. It usually grows in large clumps that spread and will become quite dense. These clumps grow and flourish for about ten years and then begin to die off. No one that we have asked has been able to tell us why this happens, but I have a feeling that someone will be telling us in an e-mail, now that we have mentioned it.... Also, while there are no tropical jungles in Chile, it does come pretty darn close to this type of wilderness in many areas but instead of jungles with monkeys they are temperate rain forests and anyone looking for a monkey will be sadly disappointed, unless it happens to be one of your children climbing in the trees or swinging from a vine. 

This summer finds us becoming more settled in our new surroundings, adding bits and pieces to our new lives, finding and making many new friends, boating, attending Asados, enjoying evening cocktails on the patio and having a bit of summer fun here in Chile. Sorry y'all, but we be enjoying the high season down this way! Verano, aka summer, is in full swing in JANUARY!

Ah, the gentle breezes that make their way across the Lago Villarrica.... The extended hours of daylight.... In Verano (Summer), the fashion here in Chile is to enjoy late night dining and then head off to a private party or go out dancing afterwards. Good times are to be had by all. Everything being relative, these late evening dinner hours are considered perfectly normal to the vacationers that open up their shuttered homes for the summer. Our peaceful little town grows from it's normal 10,000 residents, to about 50-100,000 people and that may be an understatement Sigh, we are just sticks-in-the mud and prefer to act like slugs and slowly make our way into the kitchen, do a bit of grazing and retire to our pool, but for many vacationers, the hours from eight pm to at least three am are the main entertainment hours. Mid-to-late afternoon is the time when the crowds spend their days either dreaming away on the beautiful black sand beaches of the Lago Villarrica, playing out in the sun, perhaps hiking in the forests or boating on the lake until someone decides it is now time to begin to enjoy the evening.....Such heaven, such warmth, such love....Don't worry, be happy!

Now we will share with you a most amazing secret we happened to discover a few months ago. This “secret” is located up in the mountains about thirty kilometers out of Pucon. Our son had been picking up some spare cash by operating a small tractor, helping to build a new road on a friend’s property. His girlfriend had been keeping him company while he worked. She struck up a conversation with a local maestro (worker). He informed her about an interesting spot across the road from where they were working. 

Julia and Kris told us about this kind of  “cool” place and said we would have to check it out one day. We didn't think much of that remark at the time since they didn't make it out to be anything other than an interesting place with some hot springs which, when you live in paradise that is made up of quite a few rivers, waterfalls, hot springs, etc., one more addition is not such a big deal.
 

A couple of weeks later we were all driving out past this spot. Kris asked if we were interested in stopping and taking a little walk to see the hot springs. Okay, why not….

We expected to see a bunch of rocks piled up in the river, nothing special, maybe a few streams of hot water bubbling up. Anyway, we really wanted some exercise more than anything else, so we decided to make the trek. This did happen to involve crawling through a couple of barbed wire fences....and Oh, did we mention that there were signs everywhere, but NOT in English, that read Private Property? We decided if we were caught we would play the ignorance card. I was going to wear my finest Swedish accent......

As fate would have it, this was no ordinary “cool” place. WOW is all we can say! Actually Kris and Julia had "punk'd" us, but good (when you get punk'd, it is kind of like being made to look like the village idiot, just not quite so badly, well….maybe sometimes, anyway).

We have to try and explain this rapturous place, the steps carved out of solid crystalline rock, wood and clay that someone had put many hundreds of man-hours of labor into creating. We had no idea what the destination would be like until we actually reached it, because we had to watch every, single footstep. It would have been easy to make one foolish move and then it would be "chao for us!" The fall would have been brutal and quite final.

The steps that were made of wood were practically like a ladder, so we assume someone a LOT younger than the two of us had to have been the engineer of such a project! This serendipitous spot has to be one of the most fantastic and ingenious feats of handmade engineering to be found anywhere on Earth, as well as one of the most beautiful places we have EVER SEEN, IN OUR ENTIRE LIVES!!!!

This was more than a “cool” experience. This was a glimpse of a REAL primeval Jungle, with a twist because this was not a jungle at all, it was a forest totally free of dangerous OR poisonous critters, except perhaps the wild boars, but THEY too would be hard-pressed to keep from falling into the river below.

No mosquitoes, NOTHING that could make us itch, swell up.....or worse. All around us were sheer rock cliffs filled with vines, ferns and bamboo that grew out of the cracks and every step of the way there was always a bamboo branch that was exactly where it was needed to steady oneself, or a wood railing that had been cut from the thick forest which enveloped us and had been strung between trees. There were the clay steps, looking as if they were swept regularly, MY GOD!!!! There were giant quartzite rocks with moss, ferns, vines and water that glistened as it slid silently down these gigantic rock monoliths. The river below was deafening as it echoed down the canyon. We felt as if we would go deaf if we spent more than ten minutes in that spot and we are already always yelling out to each other, "what did you say?" Also, we fully expected to see a dinosaur or a pterodactyl, we truly did. We thought this was what it must feel like to be in an ancient jungle, on the verge of finding the Lost City that held all of the answers for humanity. 

The many differing varieties of ferns that were the size of cars and the dazzlingly beautiful flowers and so MANY different types of foliage, vines, trees, anything and everything you can imagine and in every color imaginable! We would be willing to bet that a botanist would find many new species of moss or ferns with every footstep. We can also imagine an archaeologist WOULD find something in that spot....just a feeling....but.....everything was just TOO perfect. On second thought, the hand of whomever or whatever has created us has shown us that we are but fools to believe that we can compete with such majesty. Mankind is foolish, indeed, except when they work to create beauty such as the small addition to the river we visited that day. 

We finally reached the bottom of this sheer rock cliff to find that it was part of an overhang and underneath was.....a, no, THE most beautiful natural and manmade term, (thermal hot spring) with a few cemented-in rocks that looked as if they were jade, also a perfectly symmetrical stairway into the pool. The pool itself was built so that it could always empty itself and refill, just-so. The water was the PERFECT temperature. From a sheer rock cliff, out of a small crack flowed the hot water, seeping out from the bottom of the granite and forming into a natural pool just at the edge and a few feet above the level of the raging river. Directly across the river was another sheer rock cliff jetting up with a magnificent waterfall cascading downwards, dressed on each side by gigantic ferns and brilliant wild flowers that also cascaded down the rock cliff, like well-placed curtains. All of this was in such an unsuspecting spot. From the road, we would have expected to find just another forest access to the river but certainly not the sheer drop which was at least 200 feet straight down to the river with that slightly-enhanced-by-man, natural hot pool added to the river’s edge. The craftsmanship of such an “on the edge” trail leading down to the river was amazing all by itself. We will remember every single bit of moss, coiled baby fern....we do not know who this (these?) person (s?) is (are?), we do not know when he (they?) made this spot, we do not know how on earth they FOUND this spot, how they found the small crack in the mountainous rock cliff, where the warm water even comes out and enters the river....actually, we sometimes imagine this must have been the site of spiritual rituals held by some past native race, before the terma was “enhanced.” 

We do not know HOW he/they even got supplies down that breakneck trail and WHO made the trail in the first place????? WE have seen something that only a few people will ever have the joy to see, to feel, and the absolutely perfect temperature as well....We wanted to share this experience with you and OH how we wish we had a camera, but we would probably STILL be there at this moment if we had one.....ah the earth and man....together so much is possible. 

We wish we could do justice with words, to that transcendental spot, to that amazing day, but it was so much more than amazing. We wanted to leave you with this image of our Chile. We decided not to go into the technical aspects of Chile this month and/or doing business, expatriating or buying your new dream property. That can all be left to future months or perhaps e-mails. This month it was necessary for us to reflect and we also wished to give you a special gift from Chile, for the Chile we have come to know and love is made up of places like the ones above. Next month we can get back onto the E-book, our tours and helping all of you great people find your own paradise. Oh, by the way, mid-February is the start of the peak salmon season in the south of Chile for any of you fishermen out there!

Thanks again to all of the new friends who have been writing us and especially to the great people who have been actually getting off their behinds and joining us on a private exclusive tour of their own design, to show them exactly what they want to see and know about making Chile a new home or a place to invest.

Take care and until next month,
Chao for Now!
Gary and Bonnie

The following are the previous articles that Gary and Bonnie wrote for the magazine:

• Moving To Chile, Part Two ~ Chile Measured Up!
• A Family Affair In Chile ~ In the Beginning

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