Lake Llanquihue

The weather forecast was correct and we woke up to wind and rain. Although from the comfort of our very nice hotel room rather than a campsite I’m glad to say. This mean that our trip to the volcano was cancelled; it’s lucky that we saw it from our balcony yesterday because it was not visible at all today! Instead we were taken by car on a lakeside tour by driver Arturo and tour guide Reubèn, stopping at several villages along the way. The lake is called Llanquihue (pronounced Yankee-way) from Mapuche language meaning “sunken place” We saw plenty of Germanic estancias in this very agricultural area, wooden houses and huge wooden barns, with hydrangeas around their fences. The fields were full of cows or horses. 

Reubèn told us so many interesting things that I can’t remember them all, but here are a few. 

• Pisco is the Chilean national drink. It is also the Peruvian national drink and although they both claim its origins, it probably was invented in both places around the same time. 
• Chilean strawberries are white.
• In the 19th century in Valparaiso there were many British sailors; English nautical phrases often got Hispanicized by the locals. For example Bad weather” was used in local speech as “baduera”  
• In Chile, “la once” is the name for a late afternoon meal, similar to the Scottish “high tea” and nowadays consists of a light meal or just coffee and cake. The reason that it’s called “la once” is that the Spanish word for brandy has eleven letters: aguardiente. People used to say “tomar las once” (drink the eleven) as a discreet way to say that they were going to have a brandy! Over time the meal evolved into afternoon tea or coffee and snacks, but Chileans still say “tomar once!” And they specifically use the verb “to drink” even though it’s now food as well. 
• In Puerto Varas the German influence is still strong and people refer to cakes as küchen.

I’m sure that many more facts will come back to me! At the village of Frutillar we went to the Museo Colonial Aleman which was a farm museum with several buildings and attractive gardens. There was an old mill, a blacksmiths shop and a farmhouse, with furnishings and equipment from the 19th century, all very interesting. 

After a brief stop in the pretty little village of Puerto Octay we had lunch in the traditional Chilean / German Espantapajaros restaurant. The food was great but the restaurant was disconcertingly empty. I suppose that we are at the end of their tourist season. And thence back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the afternoon. We had dinner in the excellent Restaurante Las Buenas Brasas where James drank a pisco sour out of loyalty to Chile!