Vida de Valdivia – Primero Dia

Posted by admin on October 16th, 2009 filed in travel

So as I mentioned in my other post, we spent last weekend in Valdivia, a city south of Santiago.  Considering that this was to be my first trip outside of Santiago and it’s suburbs since I arrived over two months ago, I was pretty excited.

We caught a bus late Thursday night from the TourBus station adjacent to the University of Santiago Metro stop.  Our trip was a little over 11 hours long but we slept fitfully through most of it and awoke to the outskirts of Valdivia and a complimentary breakfast of lemon cookies and peach juice.  According to my sister, they used to just serve double the amount of cookies for breakfast, but someone must have pushed for something a little healthier, hence the depletion of the cookies and addition of the juice.

My sister (the responsible one) had researched the hostels and attractions of Valdivia and (as she is also the navigational one) led us directly to the stark, practically unmarked, incredibly unobtrusive door of the AiresBuenos Hostel.  We rang the bell and shortly thereafter a lady poked her head out of the window above, exclaimed something to herself, and ducked back in before we had time to realize she had been there.  A bit later a pretty, cheerful, rotund, young woman (presumable the same as above) welcomed us inside.

The price was 20,000P (about 40USD) for a room with two single beds pushed together.  We had hoped to spend less, but figured this price was good for three people and probably still cheaper than any we’d be able to find without a couple hours of searching.  Plus, since the hostel was clean, cute and had Wifi, a kitchen, a grill and a garden, we decided it was worth it.

After dropping our things in our room, we headed to the nearby grocery store to pick up something else for breakfast.  We settled on oatmeal, yogurt, smoked salami and cheese, then walked downtown to the riverfront to see the fish market.  It’s a small, outdoor market, but the fish looked really good.

We stretched out on a grassy hill to enjoy our lunch in the sun while watching some hawk-like birds hunt for worms.  I know they have good eyesight, but I was still amazed.  We tried looking for worms through the web of grass and couldn’t find a single one, but the birds were pulling them up one after another.  Pretty cool to watch.

After lunch, though we were tempted to nap in the warm, mid-morning rays, we picked ourselves up and went walking along the waterfront.  We came across a visitor center which, luckily had an English speaker working that day.  (We started conversing with one girl in Spanish and got some information then her coworker asked if we spoke English and ended up giving us quintuple the info plus a lot of very helpful tips.  Good man.)

We wanted to visit the Kuntzmann brewery – a German/Chilean company known for some of, if not the best, beer in the country – but decided to save it for another day.  Instead we meandered across the river, aiming for some museums and the Universidad Austral de Chile (which I assume is the Southern University of Chile).  Supposedly it’s one of the best in the nation and we had heard they have an amazing botanical gardens on the campus. We wandered past the Sueños (Dreams) Hotel and Casino:

then across the bridge where we got to see seals and sea lions sunning themselves!

We wandered over to the university and after loitering around various parts of the campus, got curious when we saw a dog sneaking out of the woods.  There was the merest hint of a trail leading from the sidewalk down into the foliage.  We followed it and found a wider path leading to the botanical gardens (which consisted of a HUGE plot of land – part park, part gardens – devoted to plants).  It was beautiful and very serene. …Of course, we had to disrupt the serenity for a bit of tree climbing:

Coming from Texas, I’m always amazed by green ground-cover:

After walking around most of the day, we were all a bit tired.  We stopped in a cafe for some coffee, but that didn’t do much to wake us up so we headed back to the hostel, stopping by the grocery store to pick up supplies for dinner.  While my sister’s boyfriend prepped the grill for pork chops, we played with hostel’s pet duck:

The hostel also had a pet rabbit, but the duck had been picking on him so he decided to enjoy some alone time in the garden while the duck visited with us.