chile:routine.

the past couple of days have been kind of down-days. just work as usual on the farm. yesterday lance requested biscuits for breakfast because tracy went to work early to open the store since it was a chilean holiday! sadly the only non gluten free flour in the house was not regular all-purpose flour so the biscuits didn’t get nice and fluffy but they were still delicious with homemade peanut butter and fresh honey! and we made fruit salad with these delicious melons they call sweet cucumber

we spent the morning again with me chopping logs and truckee digging. then we ventured over to the neighbor’s place up the road to pick up eggs. except it was kind of a failed mission. no one was home and we didn’t think we were supposed to just march into the chicken coop and take the eggs so we just hung out with the dogs and chickens

and these funny little guinea hens that were like guard birds. they squawked their heads off when they saw us coming up on the property.

that house has five dogs that all run out to greet us and sometimes tag along when we take our dogs for walks. this tiny black one has the funniest face and runs up and rolls all over your feet when you walk up

the rest of the day was spent making dinner and cleaning up around the house and cabin. we actually got a nice roaring fire started in there and hung out reading and stuff before bed! tracy usually goes to flamenco classes on wednesdays and we were excited to go with her, but sadly class was canceled because of the holiday. oh well, she still taught us a few fun steps.

today was another pretty laid-back lazy day, we went round two on collecting the eggs from the neighbors (it turns out the lady put them in her greenhouse for us to get but tracy just forgot to let us know). we brought jack and sam but delilah wasn’t too keen on the idea of a walk so early in the morning. she stood on the stairs and stared at me when i asked if she wanted to go on a walk and then just turned around and raced back up to her bed.

we working in the greenhouse for a lot of the morning, tracy told me to wipe off all the baby seedlings and talk to them, so they listened to my ipod with me. i think they like the smiths too. tracy and lance went into town until late and truckee and i had to be home because the new washing machine was getting delivered! we are so excited to do laundry finally. the delivery guys came and unloaded the machine but then got stuck in the mud in the driveway for about half an hour. we didn’t really know how to help but we gave them a shovel and kinda watched. they worked it out. the day ended with movie watching and apple pie baking—a very cozy evening. 

chile:day.off.

today started off with a rainy morning full of chores. here we are looking super cute in the woods behind the cabin, sporting our rain gear.

events of the morning:

·       we woke up and decided there must be something up with our hot water so we talked to tracy and it turned out we just needed to switch the propane tanks! warm showers for everyone!

·      i accidentally left the bag of dog food on the floor after i refilled the buckets and the dogs had a feast and spent the rest of the day looking very guilty.

·       i chopped wood while truckee double-dug the greenhouse. my office for a couple of hours

but then we caught a ride into town with lance and spend the afternoon hanging out there! we made some pit-stops along the way to drop off trash and recycling and feed some stray dogs by the grocery store. truckee and i decided to do a café tour so we could use wifi and catch up on some business and emails and such, so we started off in école with soup and bread buffet for very cheap. our tummies were happy. we saw andy and talked to him for a bit and we all decided we wanted to try and go skiing in argentina, so hopefully that works out! after we got kicked out of école for overstaying our welcome we wandered the main drag of pucón. so cute.

we picked up some dogs along the way who patiently waited outside every time we went into a store or café and then picked right back up following us when we came back out. they could tell we were suckers for their puppy dog eyes.

then we saw this huge great dane, and kept on seeing it just wandering around town the rest of the day. it was everywhere we looked!

we got to the end of the main street and it ended in a beautiful view of lake villarrica! we wandered out onto the dock with our gang of dogs in tow.

our second café stop resulted in fancy coffee drinks and chocolate, we figured we could afford to be a bit indulgent after roughing it in our cabin and doing tough girl chores for the past few days. we were sitting in the window and andy walked by and saw us so we came in and we hung out there for a while. he talked his way into a free cookie from the girl working the bakery by saying he spent all his money on beer, but truckee and i couldn’t quite charm her and we had to pay for our goodies. no fair.

we wandered back to the store to meet lance, did some last minute chores at home and then resorted to hugging the electric tea kettle for warmth because we couldn’t get the fire to start.

it was definitely a nice (half) day off though!

chile:work.and.work.

the past two days have been full of work work work! yesterday started off with:

1. feeding the animals…which is adorable because there are so many of them and they all do a little happy dance when it is breakfast time. especially delilah, the only girl doggie.

2. waking tracy up with hammering. whoops. we were prepping these milk carton-turned-planters by punching holes in the bottom with a hammer and nails and it was a bit too loud.

luckily after that mishap, the day turned into a cooking marathon. andy was leaving  to go work in the hostel école that we stayed in the first morning we were in pucón, so we made him a farewell lunch. mexican food and fruit salad! this is the stove/oven i was encouraged to cook on all day:

i have to say i’ve definitely got to warm up to it. i’m not used to having to move my food around to different spots on the stove, constantly turn it while its in the oven, and wait twice as long for it to be finished…but it was definitely an experience.

(oh yeah, also tracy told me in the midst of cooking marathon she was afraid i was going to get adrenal fatigue [which is what she has, and why she can’t eat gluten or dairy and has to take a whole bunch of supplements] because i’m an active female vegetarian which is exactly what she was like her whole youth. she gave me this book.

hopefully i don’t turn out like that chick on the cover, she looks severely uncomfortable. time to start taking care of my adrenal glands i guess!)

after lunch and after andy left we were commissioned to make more food, so the next round was applesauce, followed by kale and cabbage chips from what we picked from the garden.

then a dessert craving hit and we made gluten free chocolate chip walnut cookies (with chocolate chips we imported specially from trader joe’s in ventura). then we tried out the new soy/rice/almond milk maker that tracy just started selling in her store. we made some rice milk that turned out a little thicker than i could stomach, but tracy liked it and said when she gave it out as samples in the store everyone was a fan. finally it was artichokes and dipping sauce for dinner and we were ready to hit the hay by about 8 pm. who knew cooking could make you SO TIRED. and who knew i would be coming to chile to be a personal chef? i mean it works for me, i’m definitely not complaining.

good thing we went to sleep early because the next day was filled with not kitchen work this time, but garden work. it was our first full day on the farm without andy’s guidance and we got our hands dirty. it was the supposed only non-stormy day of the week so we had to get all of the outside chores out of the way.

we washed all the windows of the greenhouse, and got to do it in sexy outfits like this:

those pants were kind of cool, tracy said she’s had them for years and years and was telling me all of the stories behind the different stains. i think she said the first ones on them were from camping in the jungle in borneo. cooool.

after that we planted bulbs, which truckee and i both really enjoyed. once again it took us longer than it should have because we were on a worm-saving crusade. the dirt we took out of the ground was going to the oven to be sterilized, and no-one wants baked worms right?

then i harvested potatoes

which ranged in color and shape from round, red ones to long, knobbly purple ones.

we made almond milk in the new machine and it was so good! much better than the rice milk, and my cereal will definitely appreciate it in the morning.

that little cup of almonds makes a whole big jug of milk. for dinner we made potato broccoli soup which we added some smoked chipotle to (yum, even got the lance seal of approval, which is tough) and experimented with gluten-free rosemary bread. i wasn’t a huge fan of the bread but tracy seemed to love it. i guess you just have to get used to the texture of gf bread.

after dinner we talked to lance for a bit, he told us about himself and this little guy, jack who is their third dog.

aka one-eyed jack. he is fourteen years old and they rescued him when he was about nine, he had been living on the mountain all by himself and was near death when they found him. they nursed him back to health and now he is just the sweetest happiest little dog. a great story to head off to bed with. we are still resorting to cups of tea to warm up the cabin, but its ok because our bed has about five huge blankets and neither of us wake up all night long. it might just be because we are so beat from the day but hey, it works!

chile:temuco.

tracy took the three of us to temuco with her today, which is a bigger city about two hours from the house.  we were going to an “ecoferia” or eco-fair that she does every couple of months with a group of similarly environmentally-conscious people. tracy sells these things called eco-fans; they don’t require any electricity or batteries or anything, you just put them on top of your wood stove and the heat powers the fan and it blows hot air around the room. pretty cool.

tracy and lance run a store in pucón called siempreverde, that means “always green”. they sell a lot of cool eco products from cleaning supplies to toys, etc.

we got to temuco after a car ride filled with croissants for breakfast and listening to tracy’s murder mystery book on tape. we were all surprised by the venue for the ecoferia because it was pretty tiny, our table took up almost the entire room. but we set up and hung our sign up out front

then truckee, andy and i wandered around for a while because there wasn’t much to do inside and we found a weird playground in a park. weird because there weren’t slides or swings or anything, but instead versions of workout equipment, like ellipticals and stuff. andy said they have them all over chile, and it’s funny because people use them acting like they are working out really hard but there’s no resistance, they are just metal structures. kids play on them too. who knows? wish i got a picture!

we went back into the ecoferia and watched a pretty neat presentation about sustainable building materials, and all of these housing projects being pursued using them. it talked about adobe, colihue, earth-bags, even building houses out of glass and plastic bottles and they looked really cool.

we bailed pretty quick after that, and tracy took us to the best lunch I maybe have ever eaten. it was this tiny restaurant, she didn’t even know the name of it and they have a different menu everyday. it seemed like it was basically just someone’s house with the dining room turned into a restaurant. i think that’s exactly what it was actually. but anyways it started with homemade bread and a mixture of oil and merkén for dipping

and homemade juice. truckee, andy and I all got carrot and tracy got a mix of carrot, beet, and quinoa. yuuuum

then came food! We all got the vegetariano plate, i think it had bulgur, split peas, hominy, a cabbage and broccoli slaw, and homemade cheese. my kind of meal for sure.

then we ordered dessert which was creamed quinoa with homemade jam, it was super good. like rice pudding but with quinoa i was told, but i’ve never had rice pudding.

to finish off the meal we got mate! so it comes in this little cup with a metal straw called a bombilla and a pot of boiling water. you pour water in, sip through the straw and then pass it on to the next person for their turn. you keep passing until all the water is gone.

tracy told us all sorts of maté etiquette like you don’t say “gracias” unless you don’t want anymore, you always pass to the next person with the straw facing them, you never touch the straw, etc. etc. i got a gourd and straw for maté as a gift last year but haven’t used it yet so i’ll definitely pick up some maté to bring back to the states, truckee and i both liked it a lot! a good pick-me-up.

after lunch we made a trip to the mercado (market) and it was like a gigantic farmers market.

there were tons of stands selling all sorts of things like beans,

peppers,

and this stand was entirely dedicated to selling different types of merkén!

we got all sorts of goodies: tomatoes, avocado, peas, broccoli, pears, honey, butter, and this delicious fruit they call sweet cucumber. it’s like this tiny melon that tastes like a watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe all mixed together.

truckee and i were running low on cereal for breakfast so after the market we stopped in the grocery store which was highly entertaining. they were playing this fast paced upbeat music really loud and i think it made everyone walk around really fast because it was crazy in there.

we made it out of the market alive and then headed over to the gigantic department store “falabella” which is like a sears or something. tracy needed to buy a new washing machine and truckee, andy an I entertained ourselves finding things like this:

what a great name for a washer!

then we were sent on an excursion to mcdonald’s to buy lance hamburgers. tracy is a health food buff but lance has a weakness for junk food i guess. i definitely never thought i would be standing at the mcdonald’s counter ordering two big macs at any point in my life, but there I was, and doing it in spanish no less. an experience for sure. we waited for tracy to get back and when she did she told us she got sucked into buying a whole bed as well. an expensive trip to temuco.

tracy bought us chocolate for waiting patiently for her to finish shopping (we are such little kids) so we were happy, and we got home around ten to wash veggies and eat popcorn for dinner. truckee and i were looking forward to a shower and a good sleep in a nice warm cabin but when we got in we discovered that the pilot light for the water heater  was out and we couldn't get the fire to stay lit, so we gave up and just decided to burrow into bed and drink some tea to warm up. innovation right there. 

chile:farm.day.uno.

today was our first full day on the farm! it consisted of a lot of andy working and truckee and i standing and watching. we were learning by example…plus he said he didn’t mind, he just enjoyed the company because he has been on the farm for about a month now and said it got pretty lonely. andy came down to chile in february of this year, and lived up in the north teaching english until early july when he came down here to los nevados.  he is just waiting it out until september when he has a job even further down south being a yoga teacher and bike tour guide.

but anyways the day started off with a run. or more like an attempted run. after about ten minutes we all realized running uphill at such a high elevation when its less than ten degrees out isn’t the same as running back at home. so it turned into a nice morning walk. then came breakfast of champions in the cabin: cornflakes! i have to say i can’t remember the last time i had cornflakes and they actually tasted pretty good.  we have a little outdoor kitchen attached to the cabin where we keep mostly just our breakfast food but its so cold outside it also works as a kind of second fridge for the house.

to go with our cereal andy made us tea from some dried mint leaves and a handy little electric tea kettle.

then we headed down to the greenhouses and started working! first came compost. and there was A LOT of compost. basically for a few hours we sifted through dirt to get the good stuff, and threw the rest back in the bin to keep on compostin’.

there was lots of good stuff in there. it smelled awesome.

apparently it took us far longer to get through all of it because truckee and i didn’t want to squish the worms on the metal grid the dirt went through. no worm murderers here!

we took a quick lunch break out in the cabin kitchen and made eggs and toast with avocado, honey, and homemade peanut butter. simple but de-lish. it was fun cooking on the little camping stove too.

andy just became a vegetarian in the beginning of the year but he doesn’t know how to cook anything so we started his lessons with scrambled eggs.

after lunch we went back to work, this time making a trellis sort of thing for flowers to climb up in the greenhouse. all of tracy’s outdoor greenhouses and the wood shed are build of this wood called colihue that kind of looks like bamboo

we also harvested cabbage and kale, hoping to use some if it for dinner.

the workday was over around 5 and we showered and got ready to cook! but first lance called us up onto the deck to see this beautiful sunset. he said los nevados was giving us a proper welcome

it was also a pretty clear day today, unlike yesterday so we could see the view of the two volcanos. this is llaima:

the big one that is closer is called villarrica but i didn’t get a photo today. hopefully we will get to hike up villarrica while we are here, andy did it and said it was amazing.

for dinner we made a sort of fancy tomato soup with carrots and some of the cabbage we picked earlier, and we topped it with avocado!

we also made gluten-free apple crisp for dessert (tracy can’t have gluten), but that didn’t last long enough for a picture.

truckee and andy were appalled that i have never seen lord of the rings so after dinner we got comfy in the cabin to watch it on the laptop but i fell asleep about 30 minutes in. i got in trouble, and it earned me the nickname “dozer” because i guess i’m one of “those people” who falls asleep during movies. oops. it isn’t my fault, it was a long day!

chile:pucón.por.la.mañana.

so we survived the 10-hour bus ride through the night and guess what…we both slept through the whole.entire.thing. it was amazing! and they gave us little snack packs, one when we first got on with a “pizza-flavored” sandwich (i have no idea) and the other at about 5 am with an apple flavored cookie and mango juice! anyways we almost got off at the wrong stop but thankfully the bus driver knew where we were supposed to go and shooed us back on. (i think andrés told him we would probably be incompetent). we got to pucón and started lugging our bags to the école hostel which tracy and lance (the people who we are staying with for the next few weeks) are part owners of. a little dog greeted us right off the bus and followed us all the way to the hostel, barking at and chasing every single car and person that went by. our little protector i guess. but we got to école, threw our bags in a room, took showers and had the best breakfast ever. the hostel doubles as a vegetarian restaurant and i got an omelet with the vegetables of the day. i had no idea what was in there but it was delicious. everything was organic and local, right down to the eggs and honey. my kind of place. lance was supposed to pick us up around 2 that afternoon so we had the whole morning to explore downtown pucón. we started in école – it was the cutest place, all wood with splashes of purple and green

this was the inside of the restaurant part

all the dishes were made of this cool clay. the red spice is called merkél and is the local smoked chili powder. soooo good.

and the key to our room – “arrayán”. they were all named after different types of trees

our tiny room! they only charged us a little because it wasn’t overnight, then even less because we didn’t get inside the beds, and then even less because we said we were staying with tracy and lance. score.

there was a super cool garden and patio area out back but it was raining so we didn’t get to see too much of it

we walked down the main street of pucón, it reminded both of us of a ski town in colorado or somewhere like that. apparently pucón is the tourist destination so there are a lot of places offering hiking, skiing, kayaking, etc. excursions. we stopped in a café to get some tea and hide from the rain and quickly realized that it’s common practice to smoke in cafes. a lot.

walking back to école we found some cute little windmill fan things…and then there was this:

we got back to the hostel and waited for lance, he picked us up, and drove us about 15 minutes out of town to his and tracy’s beautiful house! they live up a windy road near the los nevados national park. when we got there we were greeted by tracy, andy, (who is another wwoofer whose working time overlaps with ours), and the dogs! there are three of them, this is sam.

we set our stuff up in our little cabin which will be home for the next 2 and a half weeks or so

and andy showed us a little bit around the property. it was getting dark and there wasn’t much work left to do so we just took the dogs on a walk. we were joined by some of the neighbor’s dogs on the way, including this huge one named blancita

there are a lot of dogs in chile so expect to see many many photos of them. i just can’t resist.

tracy took truckee, andy and i to the hot springs later that night and it was amazing. sadly i didn’t bring my camera so i guess it stays a mystery but we just hung out for a couple of hours. it was a nice welcome to the farm. when we got home andy showed us how to start the fire in our cabin, our only source of heat in this 10 degree weather! hopefully we get it eventually…

but the cabin is cozy and it is our first night sleeping in an actual bed since monday night so cheers to a good sleep.