Escape Adventures 24-25 April 2013
This is a continuation of the last post to show the rest of the Huilo Huilo area and the hot springs area around Menetué.  While we were in the Huilo Huilo area, we stayed in a conto at the Club Nautica in Puerto Fuy.  The picture below left will give you an idea of what the kitchen part of the condo looked like as we pose here with Pinky,  the manager of Club Nautica, with her husband Rafael who is also a boat builder.  We showed pictures of the balcony of the condo in my last post and below right is a very creative bird house on the balcony just outside our sliding glass door to the balcony.

From our condo, it was a short 1.5 km drive to the main hotel at Huilo Huilo where most of the board walk hiking trails started and where much of the activities were located.  The first activity of the day was the four-hour hike through the botanical garden in the rain forest.  I included several pictures of this hike in yesterday's post.  Here's one more of some small flowers we saw all along the trail.  

After the botanical garden tour, we drove south to see some more water falls and then drove back to the Huilo Huilo hotel to see some of the wildlife on display there.  On the walk back through the meadow, our guide pointed out the volcano in the picture below, which I believe is Volcano Choshuenco.  It used to have a triangle-shaped peak, but during the last major eruption, several million years ago, it blew off the top, and then in more recent erruptions the cone on the left formed.  

Once we got back from the botanical garden hike, we walked right through the main hotel, out the side door and down the boardwalk below to the location where the Javalina wild pigs and deer were located.  

The deer were advertised as being miniature deer about one and a half feet high that are unique to this area, but the deer we found, shown in the picture below, looked like the deer we find in the rest of the world.  Fine deer to be sure, but not miniature or special as best I could tell.

 The Javalina, shown below looked very similar to the Javalina I've seen in California and other parts of the United States.  When we first got to their location most of the Javalina took off and we were afraid we wouldn't be able to see them, but they shortly returned and Jay and I were even able to feed them some grass or weeds we picked near their pen.  Here's Jay feeding the Javalina.

On the way back from seeing the Javalina and deer we came across this pond with small Hobbit-like rooms along the way where you could stay.  Sort of like camping in complete comfort in the middle of the deer field beside this pond.  Very peaceful and quiet.

The next morning after breakfast we drove north toward Menetué, about a two and a half hour drive through some breathtaking views and, of course many blackberry bushes.  Here's just one handfull from one of our many stops along the road.  Much of the road was a dirt road and we were the only car on it for miles so if we saw a good blackberry bush or a scene we wanted to take a picture of, we could just stop along the road without holding up traffic.

We also saw numerous unique houses and buildings that were built out of the native stones and timber from the local area.  This was one example that caught my eye as we drove north from Huilo Huilo. 

Toward the top of the pass along the dirt road, I saw this rustic cabin in a meadow through the trees.  You can't see from here, but on the other side of the cabin was a good view of the volcano Villiarica  shown in the next picture down.  Clearly a cabin with a million dollar view.  

We got another view of the volcano a short distance down the dirt road as shown in this picture.  The road was gravel, but it had good sized pot holes so we had to go along at about 20 mph, which was fine with us because we were enjoying the views.  

We stopped in a small town called Pucan on the way north to Menetué and had a picnic beside Lake Villarrica.  There were lots of stray dogs around the lake and along the road so I shared some of my lunch with those poor hounds that looked like they needed a meal.  I took this picture of the volcano from our lunch spot.

Once we got to Menetué, we were assigned to cabin #5 shown in the picture below.  It was a two story cabin with a wood stove for heat, a kitchen so we could cook if we wanted to and hiking paths that started at the front door.  The main hotel, restaurant, and thermal pools were about a hundred yards down the road from our cabin.  Here's a picture of Jay jumping up in the air (pretty high actually for a big guy) along the trail down to the lake from our cabin.  

Much of the forest was covered with moss as seen in the picture above left.  It rains a lot here so the whole area is pretty lush.  We also saw this old cart and set of wheels in the grass near our cabin so I took pictures of them to give you an idea of the surrounding area.  It's kind of, not just the scene, but it gives you a sense of time that was from long ago, unhurried, purposeful, practical, and a time when self reliance was an important part of life.  A time when we didn't believe that everyone else and the government owed us something.  A time that, if we used these implements, not just the cart and wheels, but tools built with our own hands, we could prosper and be happy.  Our constitution just guarantees that we can "pursue" happiness, it doesn't promise that it will give us happiness, if we don't achieve it on our own—this is a point that seems to be missed by much or our current population in the U.S. today and for sure is completely lost on our Government.

Our cabin was heated by this awesome wood-burning stove.  It's a lot like the stove we had in our house when I was a kid.  We didn't have electricity or central heating in our house until my dad died when I was nine and we moved to Salt Lake City from the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area.  So I was well versed in how to light a wood stove and use the damper to regulate the rate of burning.  Everyone was enjoying the stove, but when we went to bed, Elaine said to let it die out because it was pretty warm already.  She stayed downstairs because she still has a cast on her foot from recent surgery and the rest of us went upstairs to hit the sack.  In the middle of the night, she called out requesting that I "turn the heat back on".  I yelled out from my nice warm bed that there was no way I was climbing out of the sack to relight the fire until daylight.  When daylight finally came, I climbed out of the sack and went downstairs to find some kindling in the wood crib beside the cabin and with a paper bag I dug out of the trash can, I relit the stove.  From her place under the covers and wearing Heather's long coat besides, Elaine explained that she didn't thoroughly understand the implications of her previous instructions to "let the fire die out" the night before.  

I'm sure she won't make that same mistake again, but instead will be a proponent of stocking the fire the night before and putting a few sticks of wood on it during the night.   Well, that's it for tonight's blog post.  It looks like more rain is coming in tomorrow and for the next few days.  I'll see if we can get a break in the weather to try out the new fuel pump and to get some sailing experience in.  I'll try to do some anchorages in the local Valdivia area and take some pictures I can share with you of the forts and other places of interest in the area.