They say November and December are the best months of the year if you don’t like rain. In summer, January, February and March it warms up and it also rains a fair bit. So yesterday started with some drizzle which turned to cloudy and then to sunshine. Chile was lovely.
However young Rusty had scratched an eye and nasty yellow stuff was streaming out so…off to the vet.
The vet gave him a good look and made sure there was nothing caught under any eyelid. Throughout the inspection Rusty was trembling in my arms like he was going to be tortured. He always does that but when the vet gave him a cortisone shot and an antibiotic shot the little bugger didn’t even notice the needles. He was glad to go back to his bed while we paid the fifty dollar bill and got a prescription.
We got him some drops and pills to follow up and the vet was so happy Rusty was a rescue he offered us a place to park the van on his land if we come back in the summer, which we think we will, as we’d like to see the lakes in the proper swimming season.
Enough of Rusty, who is doing fine, and we got on with driving the three hours to salt water.
Great roads, gorgeous scenery and lots of colors. It was a good drive and lunch wasn’t bad either.
They paint the road red as a warning, and we were come up around a sharp corner to a narrow bridge.
Note there is no trash anywhere and rivers run full of water.
We felt like we were driving through Washington State.
Maybe we were.
And then I spotted a man with a megaphone about to impale himself.
Somebody in public works screwed up and the scenic viewpoint was crumbling. Chile, unlike every other Latin American country has tons of pull outs and rest areas but this one was a little forgotten.
And then we came to a screeching halt for a pick me up. Layne had something covered in powdered sugar but she knows I’m partial to these messes:
Valdivia:
It is said to be the prettiest city in Chile. Quite why I’m not sure but Layne said it’s on the confluence of some rivers. That sounds like Pittsburgh to me but I think the plan is to take a river cruise.
I’m not sure how Layne found this place but she wanted to go to the Telecommunications Museum. Weird right?
Old farts get in for free. Even foreigners. My Florida ID fascinated the staff and they crowded round as my name was typed into the ticket machine.
It’s a creation of the phone company and while it is partly self promotion by Telsur it is also a history lesson.
Chile was looking for European immigrants in the late 19th century just as the US was and the country developed a huge German colony including the owners of the house that would become the hub of Chile’s future telephone system.
Oddly enough it fell into disrepair, became the headquarters of the hockey club and was abandoned. Even more oddly the house was saved and repaired by a Benedictine priest who doubled as an architect and historian in Valdivia. Now it’s the centerpiece of the history of Telsur, a phone company founded by five 19th century German immigrants who connected remote southern Chile with the world. I guess somebody had to do it.
There was also a brief history of communication including semaphore towers used to send messages during the Napoleonic wars.
They discussed the Inca system of sending messengers because northern Chile was also part of that empire. Unlike modern Peru which seems barely functional Chile firmly rooted in modern communications.
There was a pretty funny interactive display explaining how early phones worked. It was our childhood but the idea of calling an operator must have seemed grotesque to the youngsters wandering the exhibits.
Layne had a go at plugging in callers but though she battled the cables she apparently flunked the operator test (administered by a recorded voice in English) which was a shame as this was a well paid high prestige job for women in Chile.
And then there was the discussion of telegraph and phone cables connecting this narrow elongated country. And to communicate with Europe Chile and Argentina had to be connected by lines across the Andes. I got a feel for the isolation of this pioneer country cut off from the rules by deserts mountains and oceans.
Oh and the phone display. Our childhood and youth.
I was less fascinated by the internet display though I did enjoy the simplicity and clarity of the explanation of how much information is contained in a byte. A letter of the alphabet, a chapter, a book, a tv series.
Rusty got to nap aboard for an hour and then we were back on a 65 degree sunny afternoon. If this isn’t Patagonia it feels like the place I have read about.
and then we drove out twenty minutes in a long line of holiday traffic to the beach.
Some of the drive felt like the coastal marshlands of South Carolina; Webb Chiles might feel at home in this part of his namesake Chile.
And then we drive up the river to its mouth at the ocean looking just like the Columbia River spilling into the Pacific. Traffic on this holiday weekend was predictably intense.
The beach town is called Los Molinos - the windmills- and we saw a bunch of local RVs parked in the waterfront. So we went looking for dinner.
One sailboat packed with people. It was gone before sunset.
A monument to fishermen.
We found a funky little place overlooking the waterfront.
Mixed seafood for two.
We figured we could spend the night here with the sound of the pacific crashing in the beach. So we did.
It’s hard to imagine no one getting upset at a bunch of free loaders camping on the waterfront but this isn’t the US. In Chile no one seemed to mind.
