At 8:00 am on November 1st, 33 students, four instructors, and two small children boarded the "Big Mean Teal Bus" for a journey to the south of Chile. We would spend the majority of the next 8 days inside of the bus traveling all over the south of Chile, eating interesting food, getting food poisoning, seeing beautiful sights, and learning a lot.
Chiloe is an Island near the south of Chile, which puts it farther south than any of the other continents except Antarctica. Viña is near the center of this map, where the red region starts, and Chiloe is the blue finger sticking out a little way further south. about a 16 hour straight drive.
Our first day was a travel day, and we stayed in Concepcion Chile, which is a very beautiful town known for its university and the incredible campus.
The second day we went to "El Chiflon Del Diablo" which is a coal mine under the ocean. Before going there we watched a movie which highlighted the horrible working conditions the workers faced, and the fact that over 200 people died in that mine over the coarse of its history!
While in the mine I got a little sick in the stomach (probably from the completo I ate the day before) and spent the rest of the trip with a sour stomach. The next Day was a very long day in the bus, in which we travelled from Villarica, where we slept, to Chiloe, but we did get to see a lot of the south of Chile, "the lakes region" which really reminded me of fall in northern Minnesota.
Chiloe is in an area of Chile less developed and "modernized" than the rest of the country. it is mostly small family farms, where the cattle, sheep, and birds still graze, and there are more species of plants than just corn.
The Chilotan people have some cool myths that we learned about, such as the "Trauco," which is a horribly ugly, short, and... um... potent imp who basically terrorizes the country-side impregnating unmarried women, or his daughter, the "fiura," which is an unbearably ugly woman who is very strong and disfigures the townspeople who go into the woods alone.
The Chilotans also are apparently amazing cooks, which we found out as we enjoyed the "curanto," which is a typical Chilotan meal designed for feasts and parties. What they do is dig a hole under ground, fill it full of hot rocks, cover those rocks with muscles and clams with meat (chicken and pork) on top of that, and potatoes (which apparently originally came from Chiloe) on top of all that. They cover this amazing pile of food with leaves, then dirt and let it slow cook all day.
After Chiloe, we started traveling home, we first went to Castro, enjoyed the Artesania there, ate some awesome seafood, and checked out the cool fort that was put there to defend the Spanish land from the Dutch.
On the second to last day, we got to tour the Kuntsman Brewery, which was really interesting. We ate a good lunch there.
Tried some of their product.
And were again on our way. The rest of the trip was more of less just traveling, broken up by some small excursions from the bus. We arrived in Viña on Saturday the 8th, ready for a return to "normal" life in chile. After 11 hours of sleep, my stomach is finally feeling better!
