As you saw in our last post, we just arrived in Villarrica a few minutes ago. But, we just couldn’t keep that post going any longer. However, don’t forget that we woke up in Giza in Egypt where we went to see the pyramids and then went to the airport, flew to Frankfurt in Germany, flew overnight to Buenos Aires in Argentina, flew to Santiago in Chile, spent the day in Santiago, and then took an overnight bus to get here. Not the best sleeps ever… but… we can also not stop exploring, haha. We will be in Villarrica for a limited time, so we have to take advantage of the time we have. We arrive to where we will spend our nights here, refuse to sleep in an actual bed since it is early in the morning (7:30 am), and then head out!
Before we get going we will have to give you a little history. We are currently in the “south” of Chile. We use it in quotation marks because it is what Chileans call the “south”, but there is still way further south that you can actually go in Chile. But, Villarrica is in the region of La Araucanía. This is an area of Chile where the Mapuche (Chile’s largest indigenous group) originally came from. Walking around the city you see many reminders of this with art and handicrafts visible throughout Villarrica.
However, as in most of the world… the story of the Mapuche in Chile is not all pretty murals. We will explain a bit more as we move around this area of Chile, but this next mural really explains it pretty well…
We saw this “saying” in more than one place around Chile, but this was the “prettiest” and worth a picture. Along the left it says “We all have Mapuche blood, the poor in their veins, and the rich on their hands.” We hope to visit some Mapuche areas to give a bit more history of the indigenous people of southern Chile.
But, let’s get walking around Villarrica!
We kind of already told you what exactly Villarrica is famous for when we were arriving this morning. We’re in the city of Villarrica, which is on the coast of Lake Villarrica, which sits just next to Villarrica Volcano. You can imagine that this makes Villarrica very picturesque…
You can decide for yourself if you think it is picturesque or not… but we definitely think so! You can just see the volcano poking out of the clouds on the right of the above panoramic picture. You can regularly climb up the volcano with some trekking companies, mainly out of Pucon (a nearby city), but… we really wanted to do this but everyone told us that we probably shouldn’t. The volcano was in “yellow” while we were there, meaning that it could be ejecting rocks and things like that. The three levels are green – meaning that everything is okay, yellow – increased volcanic activity, and red – even more volcanic activity with a good chance of eruption. The last major eruption was back in 2015. So… we will have to climb the volcano on a later date… But we can look at it from afar, haha.
Of course you didn’t actually think that my travel partner would leave you without seeing the volcano from close up. We don’t carry around a bunch of cameras for nothing! Hehe.
But, that’s pretty much it! We just take our time and enjoy the walk along the Villarrica waterfront. It seems that pretty much every place we visit we gravitate towards the water… who knows why that may be, haha.
It’s such a nice day out! But, where Santiago was very, very hot… Villarrica is nice. Almost a little cool, haha. And that’s that we’re visiting in the summer! But that’s fine. The sun warms us up as we keep walking. Along the waterfront you see little cafes, places to rent boats, restaurants, and at the very end is the municipal beach. Although the above picture seems to show that there aren’t people, there were quite a few. It’s a nice walk. But there are even more people later in the day once work is done, of course.
Everyone loves to take pictures of both the lake and volcano, as you can imagine and see with the framed picture, haha. You can also see people swimming behind us. Again, there are many people around… but we waited until the clouds moved and let us see the volcano clearly. Other people don’t seem to have been as patient… Maybe because they’re at the beach?
Just kidding, there aren’t that many people at the beach, haha. We plan on going to the city that is just beside Villarrica, Pucon, and there we think that we will see more people. Pucon is the destination in this part of Chile. People from throughout Chile come to vacation in Pucon. We will definitely take you there and we expect to see a difference in the amount of people. But, we’re not complaining. We can calmly walk around and take in the beauty. QUITE a difference walking around Villarrica (~49,000 people) and Cairo (~23,000,000 people)!
We keep walking along the waterfront, walk through a little farmer’s market-type thing, and get to this statue. We could make up a story that this is a famous Mapuche… but without knowing for sure we wouldn’t dare. We always try to pass on accurate information to you, dear reader. We turn around and start walking back the way we came.
As we’re sure you’re aware, we love street/public art… Which means that the Villarrica waterfront is a nice place for us to walk around. There are a few murals along the beach if you keep your eyes open to see them all.
Our last picture along the waterfront is the last “touristy” picture of Villarrica, a classic for any tourist.
And here we had a close call! While I was posing for this picture a little girl came up to me and grabbed me!!! She started walking away while my travel partner just stood there watching. I have never felt so betrayed!! Luckily her mother told her that I was posing for a picture and to put me back, but that was a close call. Pfew.
Walking a bit further into Villarrica we arrive to our last picture of the day, Mapu Mülewma Zugu.
This is a national monument, and the name is Mapuzungun (the Mapuche language) for “”Historic Site of Villarrica” (at least that’s what we understood from the sign, haha). At this location they have been able to find evidence of the historic Mapuche people, the Spanish invasion of the territory, the re-independent Mapuche (after 1598), and the re-invasion of the Wallmapu (the land of the Mapuche) by the Chilean state since 1883. And at the bottom of the sign it says “It’s about a silenced memory that must be reactivated”. We liked the saying, ha. It’s important to learn about the history of a place when one visits it.
And we suppose this is as good a place as any to talk a bit more about the history of the Mapuche. The above sign does a good job of summarizing the history, so we will only slightly expand on it… (as always, not experts, hehe).
Well… the Mapuche have been in this part of South America, which they call Wallmapu, since time immemorial. Their territory comprises the southern part of Chile (centred around Temuco, if you’re looking at a map) and a large swath of central Argentina. They lived on this land until the Spanish arrived in their invasion of South America. With a history that would repeat itself throughout the Americas, the Spanish tried to take the lands of the Mapuche, but were met with fierce resistance. The Mapuche were actually successful in repelling the Spanish from their territories, and they eventually signed a peace treaty (1641) where the Mapuche retained control of their territory and Spain retained their own colony that would become Chile. Eventually Chile would become independent (1818) and the Mapuche would continue to live with their new neighbours. But, as you saw above, that did not last. According to the above sign Chile invaded the Wallmapu in 1883. At this point the Chilean state “resettled” the Mapuche in reservations. However, the Mapuche did not accept this quietly. To this day there continues to be Mapuche resistance to Chilean rule in different parts of their ancestral territory. Now you can maybe understand a bit more of what we meant when we started this blog post, haha.
But, that’s it! My travel partner is really starting to get tired. I suppose if you’re human and need sleep that it’s not ideal to have a long day, travel by plane, have another day, travel by bus, and then have an entire other day, hehe. Luckily for me I’m always ready to explore! We get back to where we’re staying, relax a bit… and then go back outside, haha. We couldn’t help ourselves. Remember that we said that Villarrica was only around 49,000 people… and we’re not staying downtown… so we took our opportunity to go out for a walk and see an uninterrupted night sky. The night was beautiful, the sky was beautiful, and the stars were in full force. Luckily for you my travel partner only knows how to take nighttime pictures with his phone, so he really captured the stars in all of their majestic beauty (sarcasm).
Although it’s not a good picture, you can still see what we’re talking about. SO MANY STARS! And we have something to top it off with. You won’t believe us, but it’s true…. As we were walking around back here just minding our own business while staring up at the stars we saw what we thought was a shooting star streaking across the sky! Except… this seemed bigger! We’ve seen shooting stars before, and this was just slightly bigger. So cool!! And theeeeeen…. it broke up into three pieces and all three streaked across the sky!! We couldn’t believe it! Luckily we weren’t alone, or nobody would have believed us. But it was so absolutely cool to see. A really beautiful way to cap off our first day in southern Chile. Goodnight from Villarrica!