Friday 21 December 2012

Feliz Navidad from Villarrica, Chile

Merry Christmas to one and all from lovely Villarricca!!!!

We are now in our little cabana for Christmas and the weather has improved, we have had beautiful sunshine today. The lake and the volcanoes look stunning. This is much less touristy than Pucon and the lake is much closer to town. Walked along the shore at 8am this morning and the light was ethereal. 

One thing that is wonderful about being somewhere else is there is no Christmas craziness.........the supermarkets, shops etc have a few decorations and a bit of Christmas music but no huge queues, no trolleys piled with enough food to feed an army, no drunken hordes. 

We have got our plans in place, Christmas breakfast of fizz, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs...........hopefully eaten on the terrace and then in the evening we will have some fillet steak, roast veggies and then some of the fabulous local raspberries and then local cheese. Oh and washed down with some Chilean wine................

The cathedral is just round the corner and it has a mass at 9.30 on Christmas eve and then we hope to go out for food, as this is when the Chileans celebrate.

Last Saturday we cycled 18k -which is not far but on the ripio road is painful you know where -it was lovely and peaceful and we ended up on the far side of the lake to Pucon. We then had a lovely couple of days at the farm, we shared a cabin one night and then the second night had it to ourselves. The horse riding on Sunday was great we were out for 4 hours and even managed to trot.....Chris managed a gallop. This time Chris had a sane horse called 38, mine was a mare called Polca and she like to go at a sedate pace, which suited me fine. The weather was beautiful and the scenery stunning. 

Our second ride didn't happen as it poured down on Tuesday, but the farm was lovely and we walked on Monday-quite an active three days but good fun.

We spent 2 days in Pucon and it rained most of the time but things look better today. Chris is going fishing tomorrow and I am being positive that he will come back with a fish........we will see.

Somehow the decorations didn't help .......another day another bus station

Christmas Chile style

Looking remarkably cheerful considering he was suffering from "man flu""

Thankfully the cake shop next door is closed till January!!

Ojos de Caburgua, the water behind comes from an underground spring

View from the entrance to the cabanas
For New Year we will be back in Santiago, and from our 33rd floor terrace we should be able to see the fireworks. Then on 3rd January we have a flight booked to Iqueque on the coast about 2-3 hours from the border with Peru........after which we will head north into Peru. Plans still to be sorted, but time is wizzing by and once it is 2013 it will be no time till we are on that Easyjet flight from Barcelona to Newcastle.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy and peaceful 2013.

Christmas blessings

Norma xx

1 comment:

  1. Glad to hear all is going well and that you continue to enjoy life xx

    ReplyDelete