Well… the title says it all, today is out last day in Villarrica, and also our last day in southern Chile. Since it’s the last day, we decided to not do too much. We start the day by going downtown and checking out the little stalls that have little artisanal things for sale. It’s similar to the little markets we’ve seen in all of the other southern towns we have visited over the past few days.

As you can tell, there are a lot of wooden statues in this area. This is all in the centre of Villarrica, which makes it a little strange that we hadn’t paid much attention to it beforehand, haha.

With all the places we’ve gone and all of the information we’ve given you… we hope that you are able to identify that the above woodworking shows different aspects of Mapuche life. And just a bit further you can learn a bit more about the Mapuche. Below you can see a home (not currently lived in) surrounded by woodworking and chemamüll.

Now, if we remember correctly… we’ve already talked about the chemamüll before. These are people that have been sculpted out of wood and are used to “stand guard” over the Mapuche. We’ve seen a few different sources give different explanations about them… so without being experts we will give the information that we know. It is said that the chemamüll are used as markers for gravesites, allowing the deceased to reunite with their ancestors. However, we have also seen that the chemamüll were also used to delineate the boundary of the Mapuche territory. So, we are not experts and are not 100% sure. If you know, please let us know!

But one thing we know for sure, all of the things that you see above indicate that this is a sacred place for the Mapuche. Because it is in the centre of Villarrica we aren’t sure if this is original and the place has been sacred since time immemorial, or if it was placed here to allow tourists like ourselves to get a small education about the Mapuche. Either way, we try to pass on a bit of information and then continue on walking around these little shops.

But, we can only do so for so long, haha. We don’t have unlimited space in our luggage since we have been traveling for so long already, so we get a tiny souvenir and then get back to Lake Villarrica. You can even see the volcano off in the distance. We will miss these sorts of landscapes, that’s for sure!

And we keep walking until the end of the waterfront. My travel partner takes videos and 360° pictures as we walk along. Who knows when/if the videos will ever see the light of day… but you can already see the 360° pictures on our Kuula site here! (You may have to scroll a little bit to find the pictures of this walk around Lake Villarrica).

Then we make it to the end where we are able to take our last touristy pictures. You can tell that southern Chile is really proud of their landscapes because many of their “tourist attractions” take the landscape into account.

But that’s it. Our last look at the Villarrica Volcano and Lake Villarrica. We walk back into the centre of town and do a little bit of shopping for our meal tonight before we have to take off. We go back to where we’re staying, get our luggage, eat, and then get ready for the next leg of our trip! And, you may be able to guess, this next leg brings us back to somewhere that we have become very familiar with, haha.

You can already see where we’re headed on the bus, we’re leaving southern Chile and heading back to central Chile and the capital! As you can tell it’s pretty late… hopefully we’re able to sleep a bit on the ride back or else we’re going to be very, very tired. We get on the bus and get comfortable in our seat. And… we think we are going to be able to sleep in this seat, hehe.

The seat lies completely flat. We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a bus where this is possible back home… Crazy, and very, very welcome, hehe. My travel partner get comfortable and completely stretches out. Juuuuuust in case, he loops his book bag around the leg rest… too many people have told him to be careful and to not leave things unattended, haha. We take off into the middle of the night. My travel partner stays awake for quite a while… Why would he stay awake if the seat is so perfect for sleeping? Haha. Well… we know that the first stop isn’t too far… and we’re kept awake by firetrucks. It seems as though there are fires outside of the first stop, which is Temuco. Lucky for us my travel partner is still awake because he was able to see this…

Since we’re still considering this our “World Cup 2022 trip,” you know we love football/soccer. So… the sign is from the 2015 Copa America that Chile hosted. You can see the logo just above the person in red. That Copa America was the first one that Chile ever won, so you can imagine that they don’t really want to erase any records of it, haha. And we’re happy they didn’t either so that we can share it with you! Haha. But it’s now 11:30, we left at 10:00, and we still have a way to go. Let’s get some sleep, good night from Temuco!

But… you know we don’t like ending posts while we’re on the move between our destinations, and this post won’t be any different. So, we both got an okay night of sleep on the bus, but it was time to wake up super early because we had arrived to Santiago. Welcome to Santiago where the local time is 6:30 am, zzzzzzzzzz.

We’re both quite tired, and our travel friend is as well. It’s too early to be arriving anywhere, haha. But, there are already quite a few people at the station. The bus station aaaaalmost operates 24/7. There are a few hours in the very, very early morning where nothing happens… but for the most part there are always people here.

It’s too early to do anything, and many people told us to make sure we don’t go out into Santiago in the dark… so we will wait here for a bit. In the right picture you can see just how many people there are at the station at this early hour. All of these people are waiting to start their day off with a bus trip to anywhere they’d like in Chile. As you may have been able to tell by our time in Chile so far… Chile really moves by bus. There are of course planes that get you to the major cities… but the bus seems like the mode of transport of choice for the majority of Chileans. And, we hope you’ve seen that depending on the bus ticket you get, it can be pretty comfortable.

But, we need something to do while we wait for the sun to rise, haha. While in the bus station there isn’t too much to see or do, but there is enough to keep us (and others) entertained, haha. You of course have a few little shops, and the places that serve breakfast are BUSY. But, our choice are the two different displays in the waiting area itself.

On the left you’ve got a little display where you are able to borrow books with a special highlight of women and girls in science while on the right you have a Lotus Esprit Coupé from a car museum. Many people come up to the car to take a look. But, luckily, we don’t have to wait much longer, but not because of daylight or anything along those lines… instead we don’t have to wait long because our next bus is at 7 am, hehe.

As you can see on the bus, our next destination is Viña del Mar. When we left Villarrica we didn’t have a ticket to Viña del Mar, but as you can see, that was fine, haha. Busses between Villarrica and Santiago can often be sold out, so it is best to buy those tickets in advance, which we did. But busses between Santiago and Viña del Mar? Pfff. There are busses that leave at least every 15 minutes, sometimes more often than that. So we arrived in Santiago at 6:30 am, got off the bus and went to the ticket counter immediately and asked for the next available bus to Viña with available seats, and we only had to wait 30 minutes. We could’ve maybe waited a bit more to arrive a bit later in Viña, but… we didn’t, haha. So we get on the bus in a non-“bed” seat and take off! And we make it to Viña del Mar in just over 2 hours. Nice and easy, haha.

But, we leave you here just outside of the bus station in Viña del Mar as we will start a new blog post for our new city! Good morning Viña del Mar!!