Puyehue
After yesterday’s whirlwind tour, we are starting to realize just how much driving may be involved in getting to all the spots we want to see. I don’t want to spend all day behind the wheel, so despite going outside my travel coordinator’s comfort zone, we’re going freestyle from here, booking one night at a time as we work our way around the area.
Today’s destination is Puyehue, another national park a few hours north famous for its hot springs. After the long drive and a short hike, a good soak is pretty relaxing, and we let the afternoon slowly drift away until we are pretty close to cooked.
Ou accommodation for this evening is an eco-resort on a lake. The “eco” part I think just refers to the fact they don’t use any kind of machinery to maintain the rutted gravel road to the property, and “resort” seems to be some sort of local word for basic two-story house with a bedroom for rent. Walking down the narrow hallway to our room at the end of the hall, it feels like I’m visiting relatives somewhere.
The nearest town is about 5 miles away, so we figure we can run our little rental car through the pothole gauntlet a couple more times in search of dinner. We find a few food stalls and make short work of some papas rellenas, empanadas, and salchipapas, but the Holy Trinity of starch leaves my better half in need of some meat. We remember seeing a little old man waving a sign for his restaurant back on the main road and figure we can probably stop in and split an order of chicken.
It’s clearly low season here as we are barely out of the car before someone rushes out to greet us and walk us all the way from the parking lot to a nice table in front of the fireplace. There is no menu, but we gather the specialty of the house is wild boar, served up with potatoes. They are clearly very proud of their food and we’re up for giving it a try, so “two plates, please”.
What hits the table looks like something out of the Flintstones. The two gargantuan slabs of meat alone are more than I could ever hope to eat (even if I hadn’t starched up beforehand) and unfortunately for her, those are matched by what has to be at least a half dozen potatoes, sliced up, fried and piled into a small mountain on Angela’s plate. I think if she eats it all she must get an Old 96er t-shirt.
The food is delicious, but despite giving it the old college try we both come up short.
Despite a raging case of meat sweats, looking down, our plates aren’t much different than when they came out of the kitchen. Our server, who is almost certainly the chef’s wife, seems a touch insulted by this and refuses to acknowledge us for the rest of the evening. It takes some effort, but We finally manage to get our bill and commence our sheepishly head back to the car. Time to call it a night before we do any further damage to Canadian-Chilean relations.