Travel surprises

Today was a travel day, from Talca to Chillán, about 150 km further south into central Chile, so I did not have high expectations, except maybe to see some good views of the Andes on the two-hour bus trip. One of the joys of travelling, however, is dealing with the unexpected, and today turned out to be one of those days.

My day started with wandering around the gardens of Casa Chueca, looking at the lovely plants and flowers, and marvelling that the owners started here with nothing at all. It’s a lovely place now.

My first surprise for the day was that there were some school excursions arriving, and Franz (the owner) invited me to follow them along if I wished, and of course I agreed. The Year 2 group was very cute, and I was very impressed with the teacher Franz employed to conduct the excursion through the museum and elsewhere on the property. I spoke to the class teacher and the two mums that were also part of the group, as well as with some of the kids (mostly in my broken Spanish with the kids, as their English didn’t get much past ‘hello’). [Click on the pictures to see more of them.]

The teacher let the kids touch things (such as the snake skin, and some volcanic lava) and  interacted with them beautifully. They reminded me of Cherrie’s class, of course. When he was explaining about eggs and birds, I was surprised to see an emu egg, which I had not noticed on my earlier visit. A little bit of Australiana in a Chilean museum … of course I was unable to resist telling the kids a little bit about (in my broken Spanish) … they had already been introduced to me.

As well as the museum, the kids saw a bit of a small lake and a bit of muddy river and enjoyed feeding the chickens, geese and the rabbit. I was as surprised to see the rabbit as the kids were, having earlier thought it was just a chook pen. The kids seemed to be taking it all in, and had almost as much fun as I did tagging along. They also enjoyed playing in the playground, lining up perfectly (mostly!), but I decided to head over to the older group of school students.

I had seen a track on my first day, when Franz took me on a  quick tour, but I had not seen it being used. I was surprised to find that the older kids were driving around the track on pedal cars, under the watchful gaze of two of the local policemen! They were mostly having fun, but I guess also learning some road rules and learning to get along with policemen. One of the young fellows below is not doing a very good job of keeping to the right, while the other one is mastering it. The track has road signs and even a set of traffic lights. Brilliant!

Yet another surprise was in store for me. So engrossed was I with the fun of the excursions, which made me realise what a great job Franz has done with his property, that I walked into a muddy water hole right up to my ankles, and had to retreat to my room to change my socks and hope that they shoes dried out before I had to leave for the bus! (They did, fortunately). I felt pretty foolish, having watched the teachers tell the Year 2 kids all morning to watch where they were walking … fortunately, the kids didn’t see my foot disappear into the puddle!

However, what I thought would be a fairly uninteresting morning waiting for my afternoon bus departure turned out to be very interesting and full of surprises. Year 2’s in Chile are pretty much like Year 2’s everywhere, I expect, and I enjoyed interacting with the teachers and the kids.

I expected my trip to Chilán to be much more interesting than it actually was, especially as I had finally worked out where to sit on the bus to be able to see, take pictures and not have the sun in my eyes (my previous two bus strips failed in these respects). We passed lots of agricultural sites, which were not especially interesting, but the mountains were less interesting than the other day, except for this enormous snow-covered volcano with the top missing. It’s a long way away – maybe 100 km? – and must have gone off with a big bang when it exploded.

I did not have high expectations of Chillán, and I think my original reason for visiting was that I could get there by train (which is still true, but the timetable was horrible, so I didn’t use the train.) Having arrived, I walked around a bit to see what a typical largish Chilean town is like, reminding myself that sometimes it’s good to just see the everyday through different eyes. I was aware that this is earthquake territory (actually all of Chile is), and that the town had suffered badly in the recent 2010 earthquake, with lots of buildings destroyed and some people killed. The picture at the top of this blog surprised me, however, as it was a cathedral built in memory of the previous earthquake of 1939. I was not really aware of that earthquake, but found out later (back at my hotel) that it was enormous (measuring 8.3) and catastrophic. It was Chile’s deadliest ever earthquake, with about 30 thousand people in Chilán being killed and almost nothing left standing. I hope nothing like that happens when I am here.

Walking back to my hotel, I was again surprised to see from a sign  that a nearby street was named after the wonderful pianist Claudio Arrau. I knew of him as one of the great 20th century pianists, who has record just about everything of significance to piano, but I had no idea he was Chilean. It turns out (as I discovered back at my hotel and the Internet) that he actually came from Chillán! Finding somewhere enticing to eat seemed a challenge (it’s not really a tourist town), so I decided to eat in a restaurant named after the pianist, in the street named after him, a couple of blocks from my hotel. I was looking forward to the piano music and to my nightly beer, which I had earned with my walking around town.

It was more like a cafe than a restaurant, but looked homely and even a little quirky, with lots of olde world stuff on the walls.

I was surprised – and disappointed – that they didn’t serve beer, or even warm food, so my salad was accompanied by a glass of soft drink. Not the same, really – I had been looking forward to a beer! And instead of nice recordings by Claudio Arrau in the background, they had some (pleasant enough) 1950’s jazz music, which was not what I had been expecting. I was also surprised to see yet another set of Kombi pictures on a Chilean wall. They clearly made a big impact here, perhaps because of the high German population?

After my meal, I went in search of a place to have a beer and got my final set of surprises of the day, happening to walk past the Teatro Municipal (for the second time today) to see a sign that said that there was an opera concert on (right now!), with free entry! I’m not sure why I didn’t notice that earlier (although I did see a sign next to it advertising Peppa Pig, so didn’t pay much attention) but I immediately suspended my beer search in favour of some opera.

Having complained only last week about missing out on Italian opera while travelling, I was delighted that the concert pieces performed included a wonderful rendition of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco, one of my all-time favourites, a pretty good attempt at the rollicking Libiamo! from Verdi’s La Traviata (also a favourite) and a very good attempt at the Humming Chorus from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. I took a few snaps (as it seemed others were doing so, so maybe it was OK?) They didn’t have an orchestra, but just an accompanying pianist, but the result was first class. Unlike my opera experience in Santiago (where they did have an orchestra), the performers had wonderful costumes and effective stage lighting, with relevant images projected behind them.

Is there anything better than a Verdi opera chorus? It was so wonderful that I completely forgot about my missing beer. They performed some other things (some before I arrived, as I missed the start, but I saw the tail end of a bit of Phantom of the Opera), which were not as soul-stirring, including a bit of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, and quite a bit of Bizet’s Carmen (with which they struggled, I’m afraid). What an unexpected treat!

My final surprise for the night came at the end, when they turned on the lights after the final curtain calls, enabling me to read my ticket, whereupon I discovered that the Director of the whole show, who had been conducting both the pianist and the singers with a very large baton, was none other than Ana Kemp!

As I said at the top of this blog, sometimes one has to expect the unexpected and go with the flow.

I encountered lots of surprises today, and have enjoyed myself with most of them. Tomorrow, I shall have to undertake a search for a beer a little earlier in the day.