Purén and Lebu

Over my extra long weekend I drove with my host family all over creation (but specifically around Concepción) and had a fantastic time!  I took a huge number of photos, so I'm going to split these posts up by location.  First up!  We took off Friday afternoon and took the long route to Conce so that I could see some places that I've never seen, like the little town of Purén and then Lebu.  Purén is pretty close to us--I have some students from there, and one of my volunteer friends is there--but I had never seen it! It's a very small town, but up at the top of the hill overlooking everything is an old Mapuche fort.  The Mapuche are the Native Americans in southern Chile and Argentina, and they were one of the few groups that actually succeeded in holding off the Spaniards for a while.  Apparently this fort in Purén is where all the Mapuche in the area would send their men and boys to train for war before sending them off against the Spaniards! If I understood our guide correctly.  There's a little museum next to the fort that had weird animals in jars in one room and Mapuche artifacts in another room.  Then we got to go in the fort, which I think looks exactly like the cartoon fort in Pocahontas.  Judge for yourselves!

couldn't figure out how these were relevant to anything

I think this is a god mask used in Mapuche prayer ceremonies. he also seems unsure... 

lookouts! if it weren't so foggy we could have seen all of Puren from up there

Then we made our way to the coast, and to Lebu!  Well, to part of the beach near Lebu.  We were headed to some caves there, specifically one called la Cueva del Toro. By the time we got there the fog had lifted and the sun had come out and it was beautiful!  It's called la Cueva del Toro because water laps in under the rocks and you can hear the echoes up above, and in one spot apparently it used to sound like a bull (a toro). But the earthquake shifted the rocks and we couldn't find the spot anymore.  The only real CAVE part was one huge cavern we walked through to clamber over rocks on the other side. Not too shabby though... 

notice host dad on crutches- he had his stitches out the day before! trooper 

this weird algae was washed up everywhere. it had a strangely mesmerizing texture...

We had some lunch in the car and set north along the coast towards Conce.  We hit a lot of traffic, so didn't get there till it was dark even though it should be like a 3-hr journey. We stopped by the cousins' house to eat with them and then settled in for the night at another uncle's apartment (who was letting us stay there while he was out of town). It was a long day!