Names of cities, buildings, and streets can give you a glimpse into a region’s past. Why was a town in southern Chile given the English name, Cochrane? How did Pedro Montt become immortalized in street names across the country? And who was the man behind the naming of Valdivia?

The life of that man, Pedro de Valdivia, characterizes all that was good, bad, and ugly (mostly the latter two) during the early years of the Spanish conquest in South America.

The classic hidalgo:

Valdivia’s life began in western Spain at the turn of the sixteenth century. Born into a family of inherited nobility but no money – the classic hidalgo – he joined the Spanish army at an early age. His military travels took him to Venezuela in 1535, and from there to Peru a year later.

Military and amorous intrigue in Peru:

In Peru, Valdivia became Francisco Pizarro’s second-in-command, fighting with the conquistador against Spanish insurrectionists. For his loyalty, he received a lucrative silver mine, making him a wealthy man. Although Valdivia had married back in Spain, around this time he took up with a widow, Inés de Suárez. Born in the same region of Spain as Valdivia, Inés had sailed to South America in search of her conquistador husband, who apparently died at sea. As his widow, she received a small plot of land in Cuzco.

On to Chile:

Bank of the Río Valdivia

Not content to enjoy his new-found wealth, in 1540 Valdivia received permission from Pizarro to settle today’s Chile. Defying authority, he took along his feisty mistress, who was instrumental in saving his life in an attack by a rebellious partner and became the first European woman to set foot in Chile. A year later, Valdivia founded the city of Santiago. Yet even that wasn’t enough for him, and he pushed ever farther south, eventually reaching the mouth of today’s Río Valdivia.

Military and amorous obstructionism:

Ines defending Santiago

Unfortunately for Valdivia, the Mapuche Indians of Chile proved far fiercer than the Indians in Peru. Highly distrustful of the Spaniards after cruel experiences with earlier conquistadors, they joined together to stymie colonization plans. During Valdivia’s absence, they attacked Santiago, and, but for the heroic efforts of Inés, would have completely destroyed the city. Meanwhile, the higher-ups gave Valdivia an ultimatum – bring his wife over from Spain and marry off his mistress if he wanted to become the official governor of Chile. He agreed.

No matter how you look at it, a grisly death:

Before Valdivia’s wife reached the New World, he was dead. The Mapuches, furious with the settlements Valdivia had established in their territory and helped by their compatriot Lautaro, former servant of Valdivia, they captured the conquistador on Christmas Day, 1553. Though no Spaniards survived to witness the execution, many legends grew up – Valdivia was hit on the head with a war club; beaten to death with sticks; killed with a lance and beheaded; tied to a stake, with molten gold poured down his throat to discourage future gold seekers; had his arms cut off, roasted, and eaten before being killed. Yikes.

What happened to Inés?

After her marriage to a Spanish captain (and future governor) at the ripe age of 42, Inés led a quiet life, devoted to family and charities, until her death in 1580.

Immortality:

Both Valdivia and Inés have been immortalized in literature over the centuries. Valdivia is a major character in La Araucana, an epic poem about the conquest of Chile by Alonso de Ercilla, and Isabel Allende wrote a biographical novel about Chile’s most famous female conquistador, titled Ines of My Soul (Inés de mi alma).

Lago Ranco

How can sites of incredible beauty – massive snow-topped peaks, conical volcanoes, forest-bordered lakes, and ghostly thermal springs – also be connected to events of great tragedy? The answer lies in geology.

Zona Sur:

Chile’s Zona Sur (one of five distinct geographic zones) extends from the Bio-Bío River to the Gulf of Corcovado (just south of Chiloé island). Though this zone is further subdivided into three administrative regions — La Araucanía, historic center of the indigenous Mapuches; Los Ríos, region of rivers; and Los Lagos, of lakes — in reality, the entire area features an abundance of lakes, rivers, and Mapuche heritage.

Wikipedia image

Looking at a map, you detect a curious pattern. Some 15 lakes, interspersed with volcanoes and hot springs, form an almost straight line in the western foothills of the Andes mountains.

Why is that?

Long, long ago:

Cerro Tronador

Tectonic plates — vast sub-layers of the Earth’s crust — move, drift, and collide with the speed of a snail and the inevitability of death. Even before the plates disconnected South America from other continents (some 27 million years ago), the western Nazca plate began to slide under the eastern South America plate, and the colossal impacts (begun around 65 million years ago) have formed the Andean mountain range, longest in the world.

Long ago:

Osorno from Lago Todos los Santos

Beginning some two and a half million years ago, intervals of cold and warm temperatures caused the advance and retreat of glaciers and ice fields across the Patagonian landscape. After the end of the last glacial period, some 11,000 years ago, the lower extensions of glaciers retreated, leaving behind basins and u-shaped valleys. Accumulated glacial debris known as moraine blocked some of the basins, which then filled with melting glacial water. Voilà–lakes. In short, today’s lakes mark the western edge of much-larger glaciers that once blanketed the Andes. For more information about local geology, visit an article in Adventure Life.

Today:

Termas Geometricas

The same collision (subduction) of tectonic plates that lifted up the Andes eons ago remains at work today. Proof is in the volcanoes and hot springs found among the lakes of Zona Sur. Beneath the Earth’s crust where the plates collide, superheated liquid rock known as magma can build up pressure, eventually fracturing the rock above and spewing out hot lava, ashes, and gases. Zona Sur, the lake district, is Chile’s most active geothermal locale. Every year, visitors from around the world arrive here to view, and perhaps climb, its volcanoes and to soak in its hot springs.

Residents have long known the beauty of this region comes with a price – deadly volcanic eruptions and earthquakes so powerful they can annihilate cities. Few would trade it for anywhere else in the world.

Glad we were returning to Valdivia in a more straightforward manner, Astrid and I spent the next morning in Bariloche exercising, strolling along the costanera, window shopping the leather, sweater, and chocolate stores on Avenida Mitre, and returning to breakfast at Café Mamuschka. There we bought bread. The plan was to make delicious sandwiches with our steak leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and enjoy them in leisurely fashion as we crossed the Andes. That, as I said, was the plan.

Of buses and bus terminals:

Our transport back to Valdivia was aboard a large gleaming two-decker AndesMar Chile bus, equipped with semi-bed and bed seats (we had the former). It would leave Bariloche at 14:00 (2:00 p.m.), stop in Osorno, drop us off in Valdivia at 22:00 (10:00 p.m.) and continue north another nine hours to Santiago.

At 1:15 we reached Bariloche’s bus terminal at the eastern edge of the city. Crowded and somewhat rundown, it also lacked decent bathrooms, Astrid reported. Here I’d like to state that, of all the bus terminals I’ve visited in southern Chile, and they have been numerous, Valdivia has the nicest. It is clean, spacious, well-lit, and pleasantly located alongside the river, with decent kiosks and stores, a helpful information counter, and good bathrooms.

At 1:45, we boarded the bus, snaking our way to the upper deck and sitting in the front row, where we would have spectacular views of our journey, never mind the excessive heat when the sun shone through the giant window. Our seats were roomy, clean, and comfortable. At 2:10 the journey began.

Around Lago Nahuel Huapi:

As the bus rounded the eastern portion of the lake, the landscape changed dramatically. Arid, with low ondulating hills and tufts of hardy shrub, it resembled the drier portions of central Washington State. Before long, we were skirting the north shore, and the forests returned, predominated by various types of evergreens and pale spindly tree skeletons. Views extended across the lake, a chilly dark-blue, with close-up strips of pale-sand beaches, and signs for numerous camping areas.

Attractive homes began to dot the landscape and we soon reached Villa la Angostura. This tiny upscale town, nestled in the heart of Nahuel Huapi National Park and surrounded by lakes, mountains, and dense forests, quadruples its population in summer and winter months. A mecca for hikers, boaters, and skiers, it also makes a good starting point for Argentina’s Camino de los Siete Lagos (route of the seven lakes) along Highway 40.

The border lunch:

Leaving Lago Nahuel Huapi below, the bus wound up the mountains along a paved road. Although some trees leaves were turning a rust color, there was no snow yet. At 4,311 feet, Cardenal Samoré Pass is one of most accessible year-round border crossings between Argentina and Chile. We reversed the steps taken two days earlier — get off the bus and go through Argentinian customs, a fast process; travel some 20 minutes through shared land; get off the bus and go through Chilean customs with all our luggage, a more protracted affair that included a contraband-sniffing dog.

As the bus approached the Chilean customs house, a bus official told us no food could be taken across the border, and that included our steak leftovers. In a matter of minutes, we tore through the meat like a pair of hungry wolves. After customs, we leisurely ate the bread.

A magical moment:

Through early evening shadows, the bus descended into the lusher, multi-storied vegetation of the Valdivian rain forest. As the topography evened out, we skirted Lago Puyehue, a 14-mile-long lake nestled in the western Andes.

Night tinged the landscape with ghostly hues. At one point, we looked out and saw the lake to our right, the unmistakable outline of the Osorno volcano to our left, and a full moon in front of us. It was a beautiful scene. I now knew the general location where I could place a small lake that marked the start of my fictional character Clara Valle’s strange journeys.

Twilight zone:

Beyond the city of Osorno, the bus continued north on the Pan-American Highway until it turned off onto a smaller highway leading to Valdivia. No lights marked the roadway, and few cars traveled along it at that hour.

For reasons I cannot explain, from our perch in the front row of the upper deck, we could not see any illumination from the bus’s headlights. When no car beams came toward us, it was as if we were hurtling through utter blackness, a fast-paced ride through Hades. Breathing deeply, I hoped for the best.

We arrived safely in Valdivia at 10:15.

With 120,000 residents, the city of San Carlos de Bariloche is the largest in the Patagonian Andes. Homes with a distinct European look crowd together with larger modern buildings, all sloping to the edge of Lake Nahuel Huapi. A conventionally attractive urban area, it is the city’s natural location, surrounded by breathtaking mountains, lakes, and forests, that transforms it into a place of bewitching beauty. Astrid and I were bewitched.

A bit of history:

Centro Civico

The name Bariloche derives from a Mapuche Indian word for ‘people on the other side of the mountains.’ For centuries the region saw little more than scattered Amerindian tribes and the occasional adventurous priest like Nicolás Mascardi. In the late 1800s, a German immigrant living in Osorno, Chile, set up shop here, and soon fellow German and Austrian immigrants joined him. In the 1930s, a railroad connected Bariloche with the rest of Argentina, and the city center was redesigned to give the appearance of a South American Switzerland. Bariloche became a skiing and mountaineering mecca for Argentina’s rich and/or famous.

Following World War II, the city entered a darker period. Its German population and remote location made it a relatively safe haven for Nazi war criminals, and some suggested that Hitler himself hid out nearby. Meredith Hoffman wrote an interesting article about this in A Visit to Bariloche for Tablet Magazine.

In recent years, Bariloche has become a mega-tourism destination, welcoming more than a million visitors annually. Its location within the Nahuel Huapi National Park has earned it the title of Argentina’s Capital of Adventure Tourism, offering everything from sailing to ice climbing to skiing. Among the many ski resorts is the southern hemisphere’s largest, Cerro Catedral. The European heritage has given it another distinction as Argentina’s chocolate capital. Shops abound along Avenida Mitre, nicknamed the Avenue of Chocolate Dreams. Sail or ski by day, eat chocolates at night — not a bad life.

More fine dining:

The city also has a vibrant nightlife, known for its variety of restaurants, small clubs, pubs, and themed bars. When Astrid and I arrived at the Hotel Edelweiss in the city center, tired but hungry after our CruceAndino journey, we set out in search of a restaurant on Astrid’s list of Bariloche’s best. Passing by small outdoor venues featuring jazz musicians and DJs, we reached Cerveza Manush (yes, more beer.) The place was packed, with people milling about, waiting for tables. By some miracle, we were led to two bar seats, where Astrid had lamb chops Patagonian style, and I had a veal stew, both served with mashed potatoes. Hearty and very tasty.

Boliche de Alberto

The next day, we breakfasted on coffee, croissants, and cookies at Mamuschka, a pleasant café in the back of one of the city’s well known chocolate shops. For lunch we visited Parrilla Juaja, and, in a contemporary setting of wood and glass, enjoyed venison in escabeche and venison and beef empanadas. Continuing with the Argentinian meat experience, we dined at another dauntingly crowded restaurant, the famous (to quote one of the waiters), somewhat quirky El Boliche de Alberto. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, and we ordered blood sausage, a cheese/tomato/onion melt, entrañas (the Argentinian word for churrasco), and, by mistake, a full order of tenderloin. A take-home box was needed.

By the lake:

A costanera parallels Lago Nahuel Huapi along the city center. To burn off a few of the calories we were consuming, we followed it in both directions. The sweeping lakeside views change with the eyes’ focus — jagged snow-tipped Andean peaks to the west, rolling mountains straight ahead, and mounded hills to the east. Reaching the lake edge, I dipped in my hand. Chilly! Due to its high elevation, the water averages 45° F., and swimmers must be careful to avoid hypothermia. Up-close, some of the lakeside attractions have been neglected, most notably an old swimming pool now filled with graffiti instead of water.

Up the hill, the well maintained, neo-gothic Cathedral of Our Lady of Nahuel Huapi towers over lovely grounds. Constructed in the 1940s out of white stone, it takes the shape of a Latin cross. Inside, beautiful stained glass windows light up the spacious sanctuary. One of them represents the martyrdom of Father Nicolas Mascardi, mentioned in a previous post.

Cerro Otto:

After browsing through two open-air craft markets set up in city squares, we boarded a bus to take us some three miles west of downtown, to the lower station of the Cerro Otto Cable Car. After a long wait due to large crowds of students and erratic cable movement, a car whisked us up the mountainside to the 4,600 feet high summit. The views here — of the city; the peninsulas, islands, and peaks surrounding Lago Nahuel Huapi; and the lower Andes Mountains — are inspiring, but the facility itself seems rundown. I imagine it gets spruced up in the winter, as the mountain is a popular place for cross-country skiing. Certain intriguing nearby sites, such as the Habsburgo Rock and the Berghof Refuge, seemed off-limits to us. Noting a large group of students making their way to the cable cars, we rushed ahead to avoid another long wait, saving the revolving cafeteria and museum of replicas of Michelangelo statues for another day.

Mother and daughter at the summit

When our catamaran pulled in at Peulla, we were slightly less than halfway across the Route of the Andean Lakes.

Peulla:

View from our picnic spot

A tiny port at the eastern edge of Lago Todos los Santos, Peulla is little more than a dock, a few outbuildings, and two hotels at the marshy confluence of the Negro and Peulla rivers flowing into the lake. Here we had a couple of hours to relax. Astrid and I spread out a lunch of apples, smoked salmon, leftover empanadas (stuffed pastry) and mashed potato salad. Sitting on rocks in the face of deep-green mountains, we soaked up the afternoon sun. Those without a picnic lunch (virtually everyone else) ate at the hotel dining room or a small eatery nearby.

The two hotels in Peulla presented a mystery. The tour operators guided us past the first one to the Natura Patagonia, which, though newer, has a rundown feel to it. The first hotel, the one we passed, is stately in a yesteryear sort of way, but it seems abandoned, like a spooky set for The Shining, as Astrid observed. What happened to the first hotel? Why is the Natura not better maintained? As of this writing, I have no answers.

Across the pass:

Astrid viewing Cerro Tronador

Hustled into a smaller, four-wheel-drive bus, we headed up the mountains along a private road used by CruceAndino. For a while, we followed the swift, shallow waters of the Río Peulla, past sheep farms squeezed between massive peaks. The road wound beneath the peaks, but, at 3,000 feet, the pass never rose above the tree line, and dense forest shielded us from precipitous views. At one stop, we looked out on the spectacular Cerro Tronador, named by the locals for the thundering noise made by its avalanches. Over 11,000 feet, it is the highest mountain in the region, an ancient volcano harboring several glaciers. It straddles two national parks and the border between Chile and Argentina.

Argentinian lakes:

At this point in our journey, we began to feel a bit like cattle, being herded from bus to boat and back again, with frustrating waits along the way.

Lago Frias

After going through customs at Puerto Frías, a docking facility next to the lake of the same name (where Che Quevara stopped on the trip recreated in The Motorcycle Diaries), we traversed Lago Frías, the smallest (a mere 15-minute boat ride) and highest (at 2,300 feet) of our lakes. Adjacent cliffs partially covered in vegetation give the glacier-green water the appearance of a fjord. Beyond, a short drive on land took us to Puerto Blest, a small port on a western branch of Lago Nahuel Huapi. Cloaked in lush Valdivian rain forest, this is one of the wettest places in Argentina. A small hotel here sits on a short, nicely landscaped peninsula between the lake and Río Frías.

After a stop at the hotel, we stepped onto our final boat of the day. As the sun lowered in the sky, we skimmed along the quiet waters of Nahuel Huapi, the Amerindian name for the lake’s largest island, ‘island of the jaguar.’ Shadows lengthened along the water: surrounded by lower, drier mountains, it reminded me of Lake Chelan in central Washington. As the last bits of light left the sky, we docked at Puerto Pañuelo, and, on our final bus ride, followed the flickering lights from lovely lakeside homes as we approached San Carlos de Bariloche and our hotel.

Photography note: Some of the photos used in my journeys with Astrid were taken by her. Thank you, Astrid!

Lago Nahuel Huapi

Early in the morning, Astrid and I boarded a large bus in Puerto Varas for the first leg of our CruceAndino tour, a 12-hour slog over land and lakes to reach Argentina’s Patagonian city of Bariloche. Skirting the vast blue waters of Lago Llanquihue, we passed pastures of cattle and dairy cows and fields of corn and sugar beets, part of the German legacy in the region. In the background, the Osorno volcano stood out in ever-sharper technicolor beauty.

We were extremely fortunate: the weather for our crossing was sunny and crystal-clear.

A bit of history about CruceAndino:

In the late 1800s, German settlers opened up a lake-and-land route across the Andean mountains to transport sheep’s wool down to Puerto Montt and around the Strait of Magellan to buyers in Europe. With the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, the transport business went bankrupt, replaced by a tourism company. One of the early travelers of the route, John Augustine Zahm, tells of the adventure in his book Through South America’s Southland, now online, beginning on page 339.

Today, some 30,000 annual visitors make the journey with CruceAndino , crossing two national parks — Vicente Pérez Rosales in Chile and Nahuel Huapi in Argentina — and three lakes, with majestic views of four volcanoes, dozens of forested mountains, and numerous waterfalls.

Following in the footsteps of Nicolás Mascardi:

A most intriguing Jesuit priest, the Italian-born Nicolás Mascardi traveled to Chile in the mid-1600s. As a member of the circular mission of Jesuits on Chiloé Island, he helped free several captured Amerindian chiefs and, crossing the Andes, returned with them to their home on the banks of Lago Nahuel Huapi near today’s Bariloche in Argentina. We, too, were traveling to that lake, possibly along the same route Mascardi took centuries earlier.

Mascardi’s reasons for journeying to Nahuel Huapi were twofold—to minister to the local Amerindians there and to find the lost city of the Caesars. Local guides led him through remote backcountry in his search for the mythical city created out of gold and silver by a band of shipwrecked sailors (see my earlier post.) His explorations proved fruitless: all he found was his own death at the hands of rival Indians on the banks of an unknown lake. Perhaps it was Lago Mascardi south of Bariloche, which today honors the priest’s memory.

In my novel-in-progress, Clara Valle, an avid reader of Chilean folklore and history, knew of Father Mascardi’s travels, and those travels may have affected her own strange journeys …

Los Saltos de Petrohué:

Near the end of our first land transport, we stopped at the Petrohué waterfalls, where the river of the same name passes through a series of lava chutes into pools and eddies in the shadow of the Osorno volcano. Overhanging trees and shrubs resemble Japanese prints, massive cliffs plunge into the river, and spray from the glacier-green water cloaks the landscape in an other-worldly atmosphere. The falls were unexpectedly beautiful, and Astrid and I wished we had more than 20 minutes to view them.

Lago Todos los Santos:

Waterfall on Todos los Santos

A large catamaran transported us and several other busloads of tourists across Lago Todos los Santos, the indisputable highlight of the journey. Named by Jesuit missionaries who first saw it on All Saints Day, its greenish-blue waters finger into steep mountains cloaked in lush temperate rain forest. The Pérez Rosales National Park protects the lake and three volcanoes seen at various points from the catamaran — Tronador (11,351 feet), Osorno (8,700 feet), and Puntiagudo (8,195 feet). Occasional homes hug slender dark-sand strips of beach along the way, idyllic hideaways at the ends of the earth. Even the excessive jostling of photographers armed with smart phones and selfie-sticks couldn’t diminish the majestic serenity of the lake.

Check out my next post for the rest of the journey.

For the first evening of a four-day journey across the Andes mountains, Astrid had booked us a stay at the Hotel Bellavista in Puerto Varas. The large picture window of our room, which has a comfortable lodge feel about it, faces Lago Llanquihue and Volcán Osorno. What we saw when we looked out was a a ‘fine view’ of gray lake and dark overhead clouds.

The view from our window

Puerto Varas:

Known as the tourism capital of southern Chile, Puerto Varas connects with tours to several national parks, Chiloé Island, and across the Andes to Bariloche. According to one source, it is a popular place for young people escaping the mega-city-lifestyle of Santiago. As we made our way from the bus terminal to our hotel, we passed a modern mall, upscale shops and business stores, restaurants, clubs, and hotels — all shadowing the more historic structures built by the city’s Germanic settlers.

Lago Llanquihue:

According to Huilliche mythology, the lake formed as the result of the sacrifice of a beautiful Mapuche maiden to appease an ancient warlock who, in jealousy over her upcoming marriage, spewed fire and ash on her people from a nearby volcano. Regardless of its origins, Llanquihue (which means ‘submersion’ in the Mapuche language) is large — the third largest lake in South America — and spectacularly beautiful. Bordered by two volcanoes — Osorno and Calbuco — it became the heart of German settlements in southern Chile in the nineteenth century.

Volcán Osorno:

The Osorno volcano towers almost 9,000 feet above Todos los Santos and Llanquihue lakes. Covered in glacier, it resembles a symmetrical chocolate-mint ice cream scoop topped with vanilla sauce, and is considered one of the world’s most perfectly shaped volcanoes. It remains active, with the last eruption occurring in 1869. Though I had passed by Osorno twice on my visit to Chiloé Island, it always remained covered in clouds. Today was no exception.

Fine Dining:

Pastel de choclo

Armed with choices Astrid had culled online, we settled for lunch at La Marca Restaurant. Rustically upscale with wood floors, beams, and basket-shade lamps overhead, it specializes in meats and other hearty fare. We overindulged with pisco sours, pocket bread, blood sausage, trout, a corn stew known as pastel de choclo, and a side of mashed potato salad. Some time afterwards, Astrid took a jog along the city’s lovely lakeside costanera. With a still-leaden stomach, it wasn’t her best effort.

Iglesia Sagrado Corazón de Jesús:

Puerto Varas’s most famous church was built of native wood in the early 1900s as a replica of a church in Germany’s Black Forest region. Painted white with red roofs and spires, it sits on a steep hill set back from the lake. Inside, the sanctuary opens up to a series of barrel-vaulted arches leading to the altar, and the ceiling is painted a sky-blue. Unfortunately, in spite of its national monument status, the church looks rundown, and a recently-built mall eclipses the views: it no longer rises majestically above the city, and you have to work to find it.

The Morning Dawns:

From our hotel room that evening, we constantly peeked behind the curtains, watching for the clouds to part over the lake. They didn’t. But when we woke in the morning, in the dawn’s early light, there it was — shadowy and spectral, but Osorno nonetheless.

Valdivia’s weather in March compares to September in the temperate U.S. — an erratic time of warm sun, cool rain, and everything in between.  When my older daughter Astrid visited me for a week in Chile, we had two days to explore the city, and a forecast of rain. What can you do when it rains? Well, you can always eat.

Lifestyle Changes:

Before Astrid got here, I ate my meals unobtrusively alone — perhaps ordering grilled fillet of local fish, a boiled potato, and two-ingredient salad at the marketplace or trying the menú al día, a popular modestly priced fixed luncheon menu served at many restaurants and cafés. She arrived armed with an online list of Valdivia’s best wining (well, beering) and dining establishments, and my meals became more sophisticated.

Here are some of our culinary highlights.

 Cafe Entrelagos:

Coffee and kuchen

The first drizzly morning we took an Uber to Café Entrelagos, located near the central plaza and next to the famous Entrelagos chocolate shop. Attentive waiters in white shirts and black vests serve in a European styled atmosphere of dark-wood tables and paneling and Art Deco pictures framing the walls. Popular at any time of day, it features excellent espresso coffee, chased with a small glass of sparkling water. Astrid and I started with the coffee, went on to pailas (deep metal dishes) of scrambled eggs,  and finished with a slice of kuchen, German-styled cake.

Two observations: 1.) all the waiters here, and in many Chilean restaurants, are men. 2.) The suggested 10% tip is printed at the bottom of the bill, and waiters unfailingly ask if we would like to include it in our payment.

Cerveza Kunstmann:

Valdivia is beer country. As I am not a beer drinker, I waited until Astrid, who is, arrived before exploring this aspect of the city. Known to have the purest water in all of Chile, Valdivia is home to over 40 breweries, including Cervecería Kunstmann.

Taking a micro-bus to the entrance of the sprawling Kunstmann brewery, we signed up for a tour and learned a bit about local beer-making history.

Sandwich crudo

In the mid-1800s,  Karl Anwandter and his family moved to Valdivia with the first wave of German settlers. His wife, not so happy with the move, decried a lack of beer in Chile. Importing hops (which can’t grow in this wet climate), the family established Cerveza Anwandter, one of Chile’s largest breweries for more than a century until the 1960 earthquake demolished the factory. It wasn’t rebuilt, and for more than 30 years Valdivia languished without a brewery. In the early 1990s Cerveza Kunstmann continued the tradition, eventually becoming the largest brewery in Chile.

After the tour, we had an early German-styled dinner of  sausage in a curry-tomato sauce and a crudo sandwich, which basically consists of raw meat. An acquired taste I doubt I’ll ever acquire …

 El Growler:

Astrid had promised her husband a report on a small brewery/restaurant on Isla Teja Island named El Growler (an English word meaning a container for beer bought by the measure). A comfortable rustic-wood building with outdoor and courtyard patios, it features a variety of its own artisanal beers and ciders, a selection of other local beers, and good food. Astrid ordered a sampler: I look a few sips, and we washed the beers down with beef carpaccio. When my friend Caro arrived with her daughters and mother who was visiting, we moved over to a table and continued with a lunch of seafood ceviche and, for Astrid, another beer.

Astrid and her sampler

Here’s what Astrid has to say about Valdivia’s beer scene: “Having lived in San Diego for eight years, I’ve become quite the craft-beer fanatic. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, quantity, and diversity of Valdivia’s beers and breweries. Though its roots lay in German-style beers, it has also been positively influenced by outside styles and traditions. I had some excellent IPAs and stouts while I was there.”

Espacio Cocina: 

Tiramisu

No contest — the best restaurant we went to in Valdivia was Espacio Cocina. A knowledgeable acquaintance had recommended it, and it got good online reviews, so off went went on Astrid’s final night. Artistically decorated, Espacio Cocina (‘kitchen space’) sits in a lovely pre-earthquake bungalow-styled home in a hidden-jewel neighborhood adjacent to the city’s regional hospital. We began with pisco sours, the classic Chilean/Peruvian cocktail of pisco (wine brandy), lime juice, simple syrup, egg white, and Angostura bitters. For entrees, we had seared salmon (Astrid) and tuna (me) on a bed of quinoa encircled by a mango/mustard sauce, and for dessert, a most colorful and delicious tiramisu.

Standing ankle-deep in transparent water, I feel an almost mystical appreciation for the lake. It’s off-season, and I’m the only tourist in sight. The large, round body of water is nestled at the western edge of the Andes, its mountain ridges mere jagged shadowy outlines in the distance. Small ripples glisten in sunlight under a bright-blue sky. Gulls squawk overhead, and children’s voices reach me from far away; otherwise, silence.

It is just the sort of mystical appreciation Clara Valle, of my novel-in-progress, would have felt for the much smaller lake behind her cottage.

To the lake:

Having seen Lago Ranco swaddled in rain a week earlier, I decided to try again. A bus took me through rural landscapes and along the Pan-American Highway to Río Bueno, a small but growing city with a lovely plaza, located on the banks of the river of the same name, known for its good fishing. From there, I transferred to another bus en route to the town of Lago Ranco on the southern shore of the lake. As we rounded a bend in the road some three hours after I left Valdivia, the lake appeared, literally taking my breath away.

Up close:

Lago Ranco is a pretty little town. The homes, mostly clapboard and with Germanic details, are well-kept, the shops and small eateries tidy. There is a lush soccer field, and an impressive school in the center of town. All roads lead down to the lake, where a concrete lakeside costanera has benches and lookouts. Some of the signage is in the Mapuche Indian language, Mapudungun, as well as in Spanish.

This is the largest and one of the most beautiful lakes in the Los Ríos region and fourth largest in Chile. Several Andean rivers flow into it, and the Río Bueno flows out. Roads wind around its boundaries, which encompass a peninsula and several islands.

The biggest and only inhabited island is Isla Huapi. Mapuche and Huilliche Indians began to settle here some 400 years ago. Today, 900 inhabitants, virtually all Amerindians, live on the island and maintain their  traditional language, foods, and customs. Visitors are welcome to visit and learn more, and boats leave from Futrono on the north shore several times a week.

After dipping my feet in the water, I walked over the one of the lake’s main dark-sand beaches, absent any beachgoer in spite of the day’s warm temperatures. From here I could more clearly see the Andes and, far in the distance, a pairing of white peaks in the shape of a camel’s hump. I suspect (but am not sure) this is the Mocho-Choshuenco, a double volcano slathered in glacier.

Next to the beach, one lone restaurant remained open to visitors. Rancho Ruca is circular in shape, reminiscent of the traditional Mapuche thatch homes known as rucas. Steaks are the featured food. When asked how I wanted mine, I learned that “mediano raro” conjured up nothing in the waitress’s mind; however, with a bit of description, the chef cooked it perfectly over a bed of hot coals.

Stomach full, I headed up the hill past the town’s archaeological museum, apparently closed for the season, back to the bus terminal and my rides home.

Perhaps fittingly, the day I visited a patch of Valdivian temperate rain forest, it was raining cats and dogs. As we passed the north shore of Lago Ranco, the lake appeared little more than a vision in gray — leaden water, ghostly hills, and ashen masses of clouds — while the town of Futrono glistened under a sheet of water. From there, we headed into the hills.

Drenched hills near Futrono

I’d been invited to see the forest with a new friend, Caro, and her two young daughters, a toddler and a newborn. She and her husband had returned to Chile, to Valdivia, after living in San Francisco, California for several years. Before returning, they’d bought property in the hills with an eye to future landscaping conservation. I had learned of Caro and Tomás through a friend of theirs, the son-in-law of a college friend of mine. In spite of the tenuous connection, they were wonderfully welcoming.

After dropping off equipment at the home of a property caretaker, we drove on an unpaved road through lush, multi-storied vegetation, then veered onto a rutted, rooted track to the edge of a stream. While Caro nursed her newborn, I donned rain hat and jacket and set out on a mini-exploration.

From tropical to temperate rain forest:

I am well acquainted with tropical rain forests, having lived in Puerto Rico for many years and written a book about one particular forest there [titled Where Dwarfs Reign: A Tropical Rain Forest in Puerto Rico, it can be found online]. I’ve also visited the temperate rain forests in western Washington State. But this is forest in a distant hemisphere. Would it somehow feel different?

As I walked, the setting seemed comfortingly familiar. The stream flowed swiftly along its banks, mud-colored from the heavy rains. Moss covered wet tree trunks. Ferns clustered on the ground, and bamboo shrubs added delicate greenery to the understory. It felt good to be back in such lushness.

Puerto Rican rain forest

Valdivian rain forest

La Selva Valdiviana:

The Valdivian temperate rain forest covers some 96,000 square miles, extending along the Chilean coast from the city of Concepción in the north to Cochrane in the south, overlapping into Argentina where conditions permit. Combined with the Magellanic rain forests farther south, it is the only temperate rain forest in South America and the second largest in the world. [First are the Pacific rain forests from Alaska to California.]

Westerly winds and oceanic currents carry rain and fog across the Valdivian region, and temperatures range between 70° F. (21° C.) and 40° (4°), creating a lush landscape and an unusually high diversity of forest vegetation. Understories of bamboo, ferns, and the deep-pink bell-shaped blossoms of the copihue, Chile’s national flower, thrive beneath majestic broadleaf (hardwood) and mixed broadleaf-conifer forests.

Alerce trunk

Scientists have classified four main eco-systems — the deciduous forest, known for its tall southern beech species; the laurel-leafed forest; the Patagonian Andes forest; and the Northern Patagonian Forest. The Patagonian Andes shelters two of Chile’s best known conifers — the pehuén or monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucanía), an ancient species that coexisted with the dinosaurs, and the giant alerce (Fitzroya cuppressoides), second oldest living organism on Earth.

Hemmed in by the Andes, the Pacific Ocean, and the vast deserts of northern Chile, the Valdivian forests have flourished in relative isolation over the millennia, giving rise to a great number of ancient endemic species, that is, species found only in the region. Yet many plant families of the Valdivian forests are also found in the temperate rain forests of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.

You might ask how those plant families crossed the ocean. Well, they didn’t. At one time — between 550 and 320 million years ago — today’s continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica shared one supercontinent known as Gondwanaland, and relics of that early vegetation endure.

Since the arrival of Europeans to South America, more than one-third of the original Valdivian forest region has disappeared, cleared over the centuries for agriculture. Of the remaining forested areas, approximately half is secondary forest: the original forest was felled and replanted with such popular lumber trees as eucalyptus. Original forests outside protected areas are in danger of shrinking further. Yet today more than 50 public and private parks and reserves protect 25 million acres of temperature forest in Chile and Argentina, and national and international efforts are being made to provide additional protection.

One international group, the World Wildlife Fund, has offices in Valdivia, on beautifully landscaped grounds  in the Zona Típica neighborhood along the river. For more in-depth information about the forests, refer to its WWF website.

Copihue [Wikimedia Commons]