Doing nothing is hard work.

Lu and I had a ¨proper travel day¨today. We had been moved from our little cabin paradise to a hotel just down the road, due to a wedding party filling the whole facility on our intended second night at the cabins. No trouble, since the new place had bikes for rent, and the grand plan for today was to cycle all day, then catch a night bus to Puerto Montt.
We got up and secured the bikes after a hearty breakfast of croissants, jam, and instant coffee (it´s all Nescafé down here. Pity.). Our trusty mountain bikes whirred happily to the bus station, where we got the tickets for the long haul tonight. Then we decided on a challenging trail up the hill just outside town, which afforded an amazing view of Talca and the Maule Valley. At the end of the trail we discovered a movie-star quality house with a tempting azure pool. It´s just a little barbed wire, we thought, and probably nobody is home...
No, friends, we didn´t break in for a swim. We changed course, and, because we are both guides and have an amazing sense of direction, decided to follow a faint trail back down through the woods. (It was hot! We needed the shade.)
The barbed-wire fence should have been the first clue that this was not an "official" trail. We crossed it anyway, confident that the road was not far. This assumption was correct, but in order to get to the road, we had to excuse ourselves across a farmer´s yard. He took it with good grace, and we were just about to continue toward town when my rear tire went flat. Completely.
Sheepishly, we returned to the farmer´s home and, with the help of the phrasebook and the internationally understood waving of the hands, got one of the ladies of the house to call our hotel and report our situation.
So it was, that we passed an entertaining half hour, making the smallest of small talk with an entire Chilean family, sitting in the shade outside their casa. The best was when the matriarch of the clan, preparing vegetables for the midday meal, made a joke about her husband and the large number of children they had - it needed no translation!
After a while, Jaime (our personal concierge at Hotel de Rio) picked us up and brought us and the bikes back to the hotel, all in one piece. So much for cycling, and it was only 1:30! What to do?!
Lunch, naturally.
Sunday had us worried, since a lot of the businesses close in this very religious country. We´d stockpiled some goodies in case nothing was open for a meal. Never fear, Chileans love their food! Near the main square we found a charming restaurant with a patio, and tucked in to some amazing local specialties: I had a bean and corn stew topped with crispy pork cutlets, and Lu got a tender braised chicken with fries (FYI: the Andes are the birthplace of the potato. Ireland only borrowed it!). Topped off with the ubiquitous Pisco Sour, a devillish combination of the local grape brandy, lemon juice, sugar and egg white (trust me, it´s great!) we felt pretty lethargic in the 30 degree heat.
Best remedy? A pool!
Trouble is, neither of us is very good at doing nothing. We discovered this at the local pool, when after about 15 minutes of sunning our pink selves, we were ready to go. Awww, poor dears, you are thinking, right? But it´s a lot of work to force yourself to do nothing when you are accustomed to being busy all of the time! At least we are both like this. It would be really hard if one of us was up to staring at the ripples on the water, but we were both bored.
You can always count on kids for a laugh, so we hung out at the kiddie pool, and fell in love with a pint-sized scamp of a boy, about three years old, who was playing with a plastic shark. We feigned terror at the shark, and he ran back and forth in the shallow water, saying "grr! grrr!" Good times for all.
The afternoon stretched like taffy at a fair, but we hung out at that pool for three and a half hours.
Next big idea was to take a nice bottle of red wine we´d acquired yesterday, and sip it gracefully by the side of the river. Guess. The riverside was a zoo of humanity (mixed with the hordes of wild dogs that roam the streets, the donkeys and ponys to ride, and two gringas that probably could have set up a freakshow tent ¨see the giant gringa!¨to fund the remainder of our trip. Yeah, there have been a lot of stares.) We didn´t see anybody else drinking outdoors, and were getting looked at enough, so we felt like we ought to hide the wine, or at least disguise it. So we walked the whole length of the riverside park, looking for a quiet, shady spot to open the bottle. No such thing was to be found. The place was crawling with what seemed like half of Talca´s 200 000 people. Vendors and hawkers lined the sidewalks, offering cold drinks, ice cream, churros, and all sorts of trinkets. So we ducked behind a bush, dodging the dogs sleeping in the evening heat, and popped the cork. An MEC mug disguised the beverage, and we giggled all the way back to the boulevard, where we finally found a shady place to sit. There went another hour, but what to do, what to do? Busy girls have to stay busy!
So now I come to you, my dear readers, and pour it all out here. It´s almost time to catch the bus now. We´re headed south, to cooler weather. Seems strange to say that, but that´s how it works here! The island of Chiloé has a two-day and a three-day hike that will be warmups to the big hike in Torres del Paine National Park. After Chiloé, we catch a ferry to near the very southern tip of the continent, where there should be penguins!
For now, it´s an overnight bus to a new adventure tomorrow.
G´nite!