I went with three other friends (Lindsey, Lindsey, and Renee) to tour around the south of Chile. We didn’t head into Patagonia (although some of our friends went there instead and had a blast backpacking in Torres de Paine) but we had a few good adventures of our own.
The south of Chile is especially known for how green and lush it is (la naturaleza) and the European influence on the bigger cities (German influence especially.) We headed first to Valdivia, which is flooding with German influence, and has it’s own brewery which is famous throughout Chile, called Kuntsmann (I’m not a beer connoisseur, but it was good!) We ate beer ice cream and had a good time in the museum impersonating the most bizarre German mannequins I’ve ever seen.
Slogan of the day: Das gute Bier!
(Mapuche medicine woman and man)
Also in Valdivia, we went to a Mapuche cultural festival (the Mapuches are the indigenous people of Chile who are still fighting to keep their culture alive) and saw some beautiful artwork done of current Mapuche tribe leaders.
Finally, we went to el Castillo de San Sebastián de la Cruz Fort, which wasn’t much to look at at all, until we realized that there was a man who was willing to take pictures of us in old-fashioned costumes and print out pictures for 3 mil (like 6 bucks). This was most definitely worth the visit.
The Lindseys (left)
Me and Renee, battling (below).
Next we went to Puerto Montt, a port city before the start of Patagonia, and one of the most dangerous cities in Chile. We mostly wanted to go to Puerto Montt so that we could visit Petrohue, a beautiful city with waterfalls and El Lago de todos los santos (All Saints Lake), but we had more cut out for us.
The day after seeing the water falls of Petrohue and the lake (BEAUTIFUL, by the way. We drank out of the lake), we were stopped on the street by a man who told us that he needed gringas (blonde, German-looking tourists) for a movie he was working on.
[Side note: It’s funny, I’ve never associated myself with Germans, but people ALWAYS think I’m German! And really, I’m a good percentage Dutch… but definitely 100% United Statesian, whatever that means. So now, when they ask me if I’m German, I think to myself, “Well yeah, I kind of am.”]
So anyway, we were a little bit hesitant about this man wanting 3 blonde-haired blue-eyed gringas for his "movie," but we gave him our number and he'd call us the next day. Of course, in our minds we're inventing all of these stories about how we'd arrive the next day and they'd take us into a room and kill us, or have us do unflattering things in front of a camera. But he called us the next morning and asked us to meet him in an outside touristy fish market called Angelmo. It was an absolutely ugly day, very cold, rainy, windy.
We got to Angelmo and wandered around the fish market trying to figure out where the film was taking place until finally we realized that we were on the set. The director took Lindsey (the most blonde-haired and blue-eyed of the three of us) and immediately put her in as an extra in the movie. Meanwhile, the other Lindsey and I asked around about the film and found out that it's tentatively being called "Patagonia," or "Como una estrella en el cielo," and it's being done in German. We watched Lindsey (gringa tourist extra) follow around the actress and politely turn down the street venders, as her part entails. Lindsey and I watched her proudly like show biz moms. Finally, it was our turns to be on screen. The director put us in our positions and told us that when the actress shows up at the bottom of the stairs we were to walk across the set. The first time we didn't understand our cue and Lindsey walked right in front of the actress, cutting off her lines. Hah! We knew that something had to be lost in translation because the German director would approach us, gabbering in German and waving her arms. Then, her Chilean translator would step in and repeat everything in Spanish, which we would then translate into English in our own heads.
(Below: Our big scene! Famous German actress on the left.)
We thought that our time spent on this movie would be like one, two hours tops, but at 3pm we left Angelmo in route to a restaurant to continue filming. Now, my hair was in braids when we were at the fish market so I was severely unaware of how greasy it was. We were instructed to take our hair down and to change clothes for the restaurant scene, obviously, since that would be strange that the same 3 gringas from before just happened to be in a trendy restaurant scenes later. Talk about self-conscious. We tried to steam some of the grease out with a straightener, but that didn't help much. The Lindseys hadn't brought any other clothes apart from t-shirts, so of course they had to have a costume change.
A woman took them into the bathroom and put this terrible lacy, ugly bit of shirt on Lindsey P (the girl who looks like she's wearing a table cloth) and said, "There, that's better." Oh my gosh how we laughed. On the set we were supposed to be pretending to talk and eat salad while the actors were doing their thing (you know, like acting...) but they sat me and Lindsey together and we had the hardest time keeping a straight face and it wasn't like there were lots of extras in the restaurant. There were like, 10 of us, total. I don't think they included us in the scene. This is why actors don't act with their best friends. In the end, we got paid 5 mil (10 bucks)each (two free dinners! Woo!) (Me and Lindsey with our "chilean family")
We left Puerto Montt and spent a few days in Puerto Varas and Frutillar. Both were beautiful but extremely touristy. Frutillar is especially known for its German influence and architecture. We ate apple strudel. Das gute strudel!
Next we headed up to Pucón, a city in central Chile that was not on our itinerary but we decided that we could squeeze it in, and boy are we glad we did.
Very close to Pucón is Huerquehue National Park, with some of the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen. We hiked for about 7 hours and just basked in the natural glory of clear waters, blue skies, and the smoking Villarrica volcano.
Left: Cascada Nido de Aguila
Right:
Villarrica volcano with Tinquilco Lake
Me in front of Lago Toro
The Three Pigs at Huerquehue Park
And then we went home.
There's this cove of bright blue water surrounded by rocks and seagulls and mountains. And then, a small lake (lagoon, I guess you'd say) that is bright clear, like looking into an old green bottle. We're going back there in a few weeks to camp. Fabulous. 