Thursday the 27th : exploring Temuco
Breakfast was from 7 am, the earliest by an hour in the whole trip, showing that this hotel is not just for tourists. It was served in the rather dark basement restaurant, and had fresh fruit juice, and bacon or sausages along with the scrambled eggs, which is unusual for Chile and was welcome.
As I mentioned in the post about buying my lovely (yes, lovely!) little jug, the only attraction mentioned in LP is the museum, which was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel, in the university area. It was free, and had good commentary about the prehistory and history of the area, with a lot of text in Mapudungun, sometimes with a Spanish translation, and sometimes not. The narrative flow through the museum wasn't obvious, but since we experience the remains of history as a collage, I don't think it's a problem to be wavering back and forth in time. I hadn't realised that Pablo Neruda was from the area; they had a passage from his writing describing the rain in very vivid and oppressive terms. La Frontera was the term for the area in the first post-independence wave of European immigration, and it still appears all over town (e.g. in the name of my hotel), which must be infuriating for the third of the population that is Mapuche, since for them it wasn't any kind of exotic "frontier" but comfortably in the middle of the land they'd been naming and working for centuries. I may be misremembering, but I think the majority of those immigrants failed and limped off north within a matter of years.
There was also a small temporary exhibition about female immigration to the province. In that initial wave of European immigration, only male-headed households were accepted, so women were always "appendages" as immigrants. However, in the 21st century, women-led immigration is in the majority. They had stories from six or seven recent immigrant women from a range of countries including France and Haiti, and that was fascinating. And then, as you know, I went to the shop and found my jug. I first looked at the books to see what they had for Mapudungun, and there was a nice picture dictionary, but it was far too large and heavy and didn't touch on grammar at all. It's actually fascinating that there seems to be no demand at all for learning materials for adults.
I headed back to my hotel to deposit my precious jug, dropping in at the tourist booth in the plaza for a map and information about seafood restaurants. I was given a directory of services a quarter of an inch thick, showing that Temuco has a wide range of restaurants. However, all the seafood places listed were further out than I wanted, as was the sushi place listed in LP. So I consulted Google Maps and discovered that there was another branch of the sushi place just the other side of the plaza, which you'd think might be the first one LP would mention. On the way out of the hotel I asked at Reception if there was a cinema in town, and learned there was one on the top floor of the Paris department store, a block from the sushi restaurant.
I checked on the cinema first, and found there was a 4.30 showing of "Ralph breaks the internet" ("WiFi Ralph" in Spanish). Perfect. The sushi place had an extensive and bewildering selection of rolls, and no mixed selection, and in the end I opted almost at random for a roll with shrimp tempura wrapped half in salmon and half in avocado, with a side-order of ceviche. It was good, though the roll was about two inches in diameter and it was beyond my chopstick skills to get it to my mouth in one piece. The music in the restaurant was very loud club music, which didn't actively distract me in the way of Tom Jones, but did make the place feel somewhat hostile. Not suitable for sensible conversation.
I finished lunch shortly after 2, which gave me time to do the trail to the viewpoint on Cerro Ñielo to the north of the city. The hill is a park with an entrance fee, and the attendant who directed me to take a reference photo of the map board pointed out a winding circular route that he said would take an hour and a half to two hours. I'm sure it's a delightful path, but the steeper direct route fit better with my schedule. It was a good aerobic workout, giving a view that confirms that Temuco really is quite small.
I got to the cinema at about 4.15, and thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think I understood 95% of the Spanish, but I see it's still on at my London cinema, and it will be no hardship to see it again and fill in the gaps.
And then home for a standard night in, including eating the pan dulce so I didn't have to carry it on the next day's flight to Santiago.
The object at the top is not a broom but a fishtrap.
A huge dugout canoe. The pictures on the wall show similar canoes being used by Mapuche families in the 1960s.
One end of the canoe, showing the rings of the tree.
A nice range of woven bands :
Some animal jugs, and sticks for a ball-game.
Some of the pieces of silverwork worn by the Mapuche women are huge, and in combination they're really quite intimidating (as intended, presumably).
Most taxis in town had route numbers on top, and a list of stops - so they were actually teeny little buses.
At one corner of the plaza, a bullock cart loaded with seaweed.
Just across from the cart. The floof on that camelid! And the happiness of that little girl.
A pair of harpists outside the department store, one of them strikingly young.
Temuco. I could not pick out on any landmarks.
As I mentioned in the post about buying my lovely (yes, lovely!) little jug, the only attraction mentioned in LP is the museum, which was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel, in the university area. It was free, and had good commentary about the prehistory and history of the area, with a lot of text in Mapudungun, sometimes with a Spanish translation, and sometimes not. The narrative flow through the museum wasn't obvious, but since we experience the remains of history as a collage, I don't think it's a problem to be wavering back and forth in time. I hadn't realised that Pablo Neruda was from the area; they had a passage from his writing describing the rain in very vivid and oppressive terms. La Frontera was the term for the area in the first post-independence wave of European immigration, and it still appears all over town (e.g. in the name of my hotel), which must be infuriating for the third of the population that is Mapuche, since for them it wasn't any kind of exotic "frontier" but comfortably in the middle of the land they'd been naming and working for centuries. I may be misremembering, but I think the majority of those immigrants failed and limped off north within a matter of years.
There was also a small temporary exhibition about female immigration to the province. In that initial wave of European immigration, only male-headed households were accepted, so women were always "appendages" as immigrants. However, in the 21st century, women-led immigration is in the majority. They had stories from six or seven recent immigrant women from a range of countries including France and Haiti, and that was fascinating. And then, as you know, I went to the shop and found my jug. I first looked at the books to see what they had for Mapudungun, and there was a nice picture dictionary, but it was far too large and heavy and didn't touch on grammar at all. It's actually fascinating that there seems to be no demand at all for learning materials for adults.
I headed back to my hotel to deposit my precious jug, dropping in at the tourist booth in the plaza for a map and information about seafood restaurants. I was given a directory of services a quarter of an inch thick, showing that Temuco has a wide range of restaurants. However, all the seafood places listed were further out than I wanted, as was the sushi place listed in LP. So I consulted Google Maps and discovered that there was another branch of the sushi place just the other side of the plaza, which you'd think might be the first one LP would mention. On the way out of the hotel I asked at Reception if there was a cinema in town, and learned there was one on the top floor of the Paris department store, a block from the sushi restaurant.
I checked on the cinema first, and found there was a 4.30 showing of "Ralph breaks the internet" ("WiFi Ralph" in Spanish). Perfect. The sushi place had an extensive and bewildering selection of rolls, and no mixed selection, and in the end I opted almost at random for a roll with shrimp tempura wrapped half in salmon and half in avocado, with a side-order of ceviche. It was good, though the roll was about two inches in diameter and it was beyond my chopstick skills to get it to my mouth in one piece. The music in the restaurant was very loud club music, which didn't actively distract me in the way of Tom Jones, but did make the place feel somewhat hostile. Not suitable for sensible conversation.
I finished lunch shortly after 2, which gave me time to do the trail to the viewpoint on Cerro Ñielo to the north of the city. The hill is a park with an entrance fee, and the attendant who directed me to take a reference photo of the map board pointed out a winding circular route that he said would take an hour and a half to two hours. I'm sure it's a delightful path, but the steeper direct route fit better with my schedule. It was a good aerobic workout, giving a view that confirms that Temuco really is quite small.
I got to the cinema at about 4.15, and thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think I understood 95% of the Spanish, but I see it's still on at my London cinema, and it will be no hardship to see it again and fill in the gaps.
And then home for a standard night in, including eating the pan dulce so I didn't have to carry it on the next day's flight to Santiago.
The object at the top is not a broom but a fishtrap.
A huge dugout canoe. The pictures on the wall show similar canoes being used by Mapuche families in the 1960s.
One end of the canoe, showing the rings of the tree.
A nice range of woven bands :
Some animal jugs, and sticks for a ball-game.
Some of the pieces of silverwork worn by the Mapuche women are huge, and in combination they're really quite intimidating (as intended, presumably).
Most taxis in town had route numbers on top, and a list of stops - so they were actually teeny little buses.
At one corner of the plaza, a bullock cart loaded with seaweed.
Just across from the cart. The floof on that camelid! And the happiness of that little girl.
A pair of harpists outside the department store, one of them strikingly young.
Temuco. I could not pick out on any landmarks.