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!  

cake cake cake

Happy Belated Mother's Day!  It's been a busy week as I'm helping my team of English students prepare for their debate competition next week (they're gonna do great!), so these Mother's Day cake photos are overdue!  

As I'm sure I have mentioned many times, my host mom is a fantastic cook.  I woke up on Saturday to the delicious aroma of freshly baked cakes, which she said she was going to prepare for the following day.  There were three huge cake rounds, and she said she was making three, so I assumed that just meant slapping on some icing and making them look nice.  Wrong.  Sunday came around, and the cousins from out of town came around, and I walked downstairs to find host mom and aunt working on a masterpiece.  They had sliced each cake round into smaller discs, and layered them in contrasting flavors.  My interest was piqued so I ran for my camera and paid careful attention!  

that's Yeny in the coral and Aunt Gina in the brown (family resemblance!)

Yeny was occupying herself with the savory meal preparation, which is not as important as cake but still important.  Potatoes for 12!

Ok so their family cake technique (I assume this isn't a secret recipe!): after laying down each layer, pour a bit of fruit juice (alternating pineapple and strawberry) over it and let it soak in, then spread cream icing, then a sweet spread (alternating strawberry, which you see here on the cake, and manjar cream, which is dulce de leche flavored and in the yellow bowl), then lay down the next layer of cake, and repeat! 

I believe there were 6 layers total, and then they covered the whole thing with whipped icing and let me decorate it!  But the beautiful cake toppled over before too long--a consequence of too many layers on too many slippery spreads.  I regret nothing, because we still ate it and it tasted beyond amazing.  This picture gives you a nice idea of how tasty but also how structurally unstable the poor thing was. And then you can see me gleefully decorating it. Lots of TLC went into this cake, people.

I ate the leftovers for days. Perfect.  Also, the next day the weather was pretty nice so my friend and I set out on a little nature hike!  We were trying to get to the top of the huge hill behind my neighborhood but we couldn't find the right path... doesn't matter though, because it was still gorgeous! 

one of the many fences we had to sneak through...

Somehow in all the cake frenzy, some cake crumbs actually got smeared onto my camera lens (without my knowledge), so all my pictures from that next day were cloudy around the edges.  Gotta figure out how to clean it off because I will be taking many more pictures this weekend! Going back to Concepcion with my host family, to visit the same cousins who came for Mother's Day.  Very excited!  

CHOCOLATE

As I mentioned, there was a chocolate festival in Pucon while we were there. We didn't know about it in advance, and it turns out it was the first annual one, so really the planets must have just aligned for us. At first it was just a tent with local vendors selling their homemade chocolate. Free samples out the wazoo. I'm already sold. 

THEN what's that we see in the back of the tent? It's a chocolate volcano. Look at this thing: 

THEN we think that's all there is to see, so we're filtering out (after grabbing a few more samples) but my friend Zach is approached by someone who invites us to tour their chocolate factory.  We say yes and practically trip into ourselves piling into the van that they have provided:  

As we're getting in, I excitedly point out that this whole scenario is looking very much like the plot to Willy Wonka.  We're marvelling over our good fortune but upon further consideration agree that, if there were a chocolate factory in Pucon, this would have been brought to our attention before... At that point I realize that this whole scenario is also looking very much like the absolute perfect plot to kidnap gringos. But the promise of chocolate can make you do crazy things, and also there were Chileans in our group as well and we were only going across town, within walking distance. The driver let us out at a restaurant/sweet shop where they seemed surprised to see us, and at THAT point we realized the whole scenario was also the perfect way to get people who are stealing all of the samples to leave the chocolate festival.

But we weren't giving up that easily, and luckily neither were the Chileans in our group, so eventually they got everything figured out and someone came over to lead us to where we were supposed to be: one block down, to a building where this restaurant hand-makes all of their chocolates.  It wasn't a factory, per se, but that doesn't even matter, because we got to see (and more importantly, taste) chocolate being made. 

Our very expressive guide woman set us all up with hairnets and face masks and we set about to chocolate-ing. 

GOIN IN FOR THE TASTE TEST

here, take as many dark-chocolate-covered almonds as you like

making ribbon chocolate! we all took turns. It was surprisingly hard

already digging into the goods

she was patiently waiting for us to leave...

We left that room with our pockets full of chocolate, in complete bliss.  That's how everyone should spend every Saturday afternoon--with a surprise chocolate tour. Marvelous.

Pucon, again

This past weekend I went with 3 friends (one here from Angol, one from nearby Puren, and one from the region south of ours) to Pucon, where I had previously gone with my host family.  It's on the far east side of this region, relatively close to Argentina, so it took us about 4 hrs on a bus (2 buses, actually) to get there. 

Our plan was to celebrate a birthday (Happy Birthday Nadeem!) by climbing the volcano, but the weather had other plans. Since it was too cloudy the guide company nixed our volcano climb.  But we found plenty else to do!  Turns out there was a chocolate festival in town, but that gets its own post (get excited for that). We stopped by the lake and went to some hot springs and enjoyed our lovely hostel! And then the sun came out finally and we got some stunning views. 

Lago Villarrica, under the clouds

one of many doggy friends of the weekend!

this lady makes beautiful flowers from brightly colored, thinly cut pieces of wood
(and sticks them in real plants)

COZY

the view from our balcony! couldn't be better

if only Zach weren't so tall that he blocked the volcano...

Right before we were about to catch our bus, my friend Nadeem and I had half an hour to spare so we hiked up to a monastery overlooking the town. Well worth it! 

you can just barely see the lake on the other side...

Another great weekend in Pucon!  Definitely still one of the most beautiful parts of Chile I've seen : )