Valdivian delights

From Pucón I made my way to Valdivia, which meant moving from the Lakes District (Los Lagos) to the river region (Los Rios)! It's Southern Chile, there's water everywhere in one form or another in this part of the country! After checking into my hostel, Green Hostel, a lovely mother and daughter place that was super clean, very comfy and had a great breakfast (very important!) I made my way into the town, which I'd thought was a little way away but was actually only a 5 minute walk. Valdivia is made up of multiple islands, separated (as you will have guessed) by rivers! 

In the centre of the town is a daily fish market which attracts many birds looking for scraps and also sea lions!! Boy are they smelly! 

After a mooch round I just went and got dinner, and the obligatory pisco sour and headed back to my hostel. The next morning, I headed firstly to the botanic garden. It seems to be a thing out here to have them attached to universities. Can you imagine during free periods having places like this to go and sit and chat or study? How lovely would that be...

The garden was really good to explore and reminded of the west side of Kew Gardens, and anywhere that invokes memories of Kew gets my vote!

From there, I went and had some lunch then took myself off to Niebla. This is a town on the southern tip of Isla Teja, one of the islands that makes up Valdivia. I got off the bus as soon as we entered Niebla so that I could walk around the headland for a bit as we were quite high up so I figured the views would be pretty good from here. 

Niebla was important militarily for Chile as it was an area that was vulnerable to attack in days gone by and as such there were the remains of the fort there. The views it offered were stunning 

and make it obvious why attack of that position was likely!  

(That's the Pacific Ocean on the RHS!)

Niebla is a popular area for people to go and sunbathe with its beach, and frequent buses make it really accessible. 

Within the fort was a building that described the history of the area and was a really fascinating. It was all in Spanish but as I understand written Spanish waaaaay better than I can speak it I got a big chunk of what the displays were saying!

After the fort, I headed back into town and went a mooch round and visited the market

before heading back to the hostel. I'd decided that the following day I was going to go and book my bus to Puerto Varas as this isn't a well-served route and there are only a handful of departures per day. I also checked out the hostels and found one that looked really nice called Compass del Sur and did something I never do which is bookmarked it in the app as a reminder of the one I wanted to book - although I decided to wait to do this until the next night when I had my bus confirmed.

The following morning I decided to do a boat trip on the river. It was another beautiful day which apparently is lucky as the weather is often not so great in this bit of the world. It gave a completely different view of the city and was really peaceful. 

The picture of the bridge I've included as it's quite amusing (well to me it is!). This bridge is stuck in this position; it doesn't, and hasn't ever, worked. It was due to open in 2014 and cost around $30m USD, but at least one of the traffic decks as been installed upside down. They're still wrangling over whose fault it is and how to put it right and so it is stuck in this position and so completely useless but it makes an amusing story for tourists!

After the boat ride I went to Parque Sorval for a wander round. I'd taken a picnic with me and so sat looking over a very pretty lake that was covered with water lilies. 

I don't know if you can make out the wires in the photo but there were people ziplining over the lake which provided entertainment too!

From here I went over to Corral. This is back on the mainland but due to the geography, is much quicker to reach by boat than bus so I took the ferry from Niebla over there.

Corral also has a fort and everyone had said that theirs was much better than Niebla, but to me it wasn't as good. It did however have a re-enactment of some sort 

but it was a bit slow going and so I watched a bit and then made my way back round to the ferry to return to Valdivia.

This day marked the end of the first six months of my career break and so I decided to treat myself to a nice meal. I had salmon (rivers round here so it's a popular fish) followed by pie de limon, which is very similar to lemon meringue (my favourite dessert) but the base it more crumbly cake than pastry, and of course, the obligatory pisco sour (or two!).

There was a family on the table next to me and half way through my meal, a friend of theirs turned up followed by a guy he was due to meet with. Their meeting got very heated with papers being ripped up and raised voices and it was all very dramatic and the father of the family and I exchanged amused grins! Anyway, it all calmed down and when the friend returned to the table he looked at me and said 'Francais?' To which I obviously replied 'No, Inglés' and thought no more about it. I guess a connection had been made between us though and so after I got my bill and was setting to leave he (Fernandez) came over to talk to me, along with Alejandra (Mum), Barra (Dad) and Francisco (son). Alejandra spoke English pretty well and Barra also understood a lot and could make conversation in English, which is good because my Spanish is just not improving in the slightest. Fernandez had lived in Switzerland for six years and so spoke French and Spanish, but sadly I've been suppressing my French to try not to confuse myself with the crossover so I had neither language with which I could easily chat with him! Whilst we were chatting the subject of my next destination came up and I said that I was heading to Puerto Varas. This caused great excitement as it turns out that Fernandez's brother owns a hostel there. It only turned out to be Compass del Sur which I'd bookmarked the night before! Anyhow, I ended up spending a very happy hour or two with them before I headed back to the hostel to pack up ready to move on to Puerto Varas, which is where I've been since then. I'm back in the Lakes District here so expect some really beautiful pictures again in the next post. Oh OK then, here's a sneak preview...