VISITING
AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE
JANUARY
2010
Donauschwaben
in Chile
Finding
the Germans of Chile
by
Jackie & Willie Hepp
(Trenton
ed. note: What
follows are the adventures of two Trenton club members who
made a once in-a-lifetime visit to the South American
country of Chile. Enjoy!)
Forwarded
From Trenton Donauschwaben
The lake region of Chile, with its warm and enticing
natural splendor, is a dramatic contrast to the cold and
challenging terrain of Torres del Paine to the south. It is
a truly remarkable display of the diversity of nature along
Chile’s nearly 3,000 miles of Pacific coastline. Six
towering snow capped volcanoes and over 5,000 sparkling
lakes dominate the idyllic landscape of Chile’s Lake
District.
Calbuco, one of the area’s most famous volcanoes,
has erupted thirteen times since 1961. The cone of this
6,000 foot volcano is completely missing. Another giant is
the 8,600 foot Osorno volcano. Osorno last blew its top in
1832. At that time, Charles Darwin was exploring the Pacific
Coast and recorded the event in his journal. Both volcanoes
lie on the shores of gorgeous Lake Lanquihue’ (pronounced
yankeyway) is the area’s largest lake covering 330 square
miles. In several places, the water reaches a depth of 3,000
feet. Its Mapuche Indian name, Langquihue’, means deep
place.
Our hotel in Puerto Varas, Los Cabanos Logos,
overlooked this spectacular lake. During breakfast in the
hotel’s fourth story, weathered wood and glass dining
room, we watched the morning sun burn the mist off Lake
Lanquihue’ until the volcanoes were clearly visible on the
far shore. Below us to the right, the old city of Puerto
Varas lay nestled into the side of the crystal blue lake.
The city’s sprawling, modern commercial buildings climbed
up into the surrounding hillsides.
This thriving city of 200,000 had its precarious
beginning in 1849, when a newly recognized Chilean
Government decided to colonize the southern frontier to keep
the French from claiming the land. The Chilean Government
contracted first with the Irish, then the Czech and finally,
with the German colonists to settle in the Puerto Varas and
Puerto Montt areas.
Three thousand five-hundred German families, who were
each promised 400-600 acre parcels of land to farm, were the
most tenacious and successful. Even these hardy pioneers
were unprepared for the problems encountered in clearing
trees and stumps from the heavily forested land between
Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt.
German men had to work for two years clearing the
land before they could begin to farm their own parcels. This
condition angered German colonists, since it was not in the
contract they signed with the Chilean Government. During the
time German men were clearing the land for farms and
villages, they lived outdoors in work camps, while their
wives and children were housed in a military garrison.
Odyssey’s morning tour took us to Fruitillar, a
German settlement thirty-five miles south of Puerto Varas.
Descendants of the 19th century settlers still live and work
in this small, picturesque, lakeside village. Their
Victorian style wooden homes are embellished with artistic
Alpine carvings. Window boxes overflow with petunias that
grace the tidy rows of houses separated by colorful picket
fences. Rose bushes and brilliant flowering Fuchsia bushes
flourished in the yards, while tropical Palm trees and
evergreen Beeches grew side by side on the streets and along
the lakeshore.
An old wooden church, town hall, an Alpine style
restaurant and several small shops were spread across the
village’s dozen streets. In one shop we met an elderly
woman who had emigrated from Hamburg, Germany in the
1950’s. She told us that she loved Chile and would never
go back to Germany. We watched her operate a shuttle loom
weaving Alpaca wool into sweaters and skirts that she sold
to tourists.
A major attraction of this charming town is the
outdoor museum of German Colonization built into the
hillside behind Fruitillar. We were greeted at the museum
entrance by an elderly man dressed in lederhosen and playing
an accordion. High up on the hillside was a two-story manor
house. Ornate open and enclosed porches graced the manor’s
entire wooden exterior. At the end of the 19th
century, it was the home of a wealthy merchant farmer.
Lower down and to one side of the hill, was the more
modest two-bedroom home and workshop of the estate’s
blacksmith. An adjoining wooden building housed a collection
of kitchen utensils and farm equipment used by the early
settlers. An interesting artifact was a steam driven tractor
that the owner had shipped over from Germany. A watermill,
where grains for making breads, cakes and noodles were
ground, sat on a hill below the manor house. At
the very bottom of the hill, the small village of Fruitillar
housed the common settlers, many of whom were employed as
farm hands and domestic workers on the manor.
As we drove back through the countryside to Puerto
Varas, Pilar, our guide, pointed out German owned farms that
are the area’s main producers of grains, potatoes and
strawberries. The Spanish word for strawberry is fruitillar.
She also mentioned their considerable influence on
the public school curriculum that requires all area children
take eight hours of German language a week, starting in
Kindergarten. The city of Puerto Varas revealed sign of
enduring German culture in its active German Social Club
located in a concrete building that covered half a city
block.
Dinner that evening at a private restaurant was a
wonderfully different treat. The restaurant, called Martin
Pescador, was also the ranch home of our hosts, Rocky and
Carla Santera. All of the vegetables, fruits and meats
served were grown on their six thousand acre fondo. Rocky
was cooking chicken in his six sided smoke house when we
arrived. His wife, Carla, greeted us and led us inside a
rustic pine dining room where two long tables were set for
us. We enjoyed Pisco Sours and local wines and snacked on
Rocky’s delicious smoked salmon and crackers. At Carla’s
invitation, we sat down to a salad and vegetable course
where more wine was served. Then platters of smoked chicken
were carried in along with dishes of boiled potatoes. The
deep savory flavor of the chicken was fantastic and we
quickly rated it as the best meal of the trip. After a
dessert of homemade Black Forest Cake, traditional bowls of
mate’ filled with green yerbe leaves were brought out.
Drinking yerbe mate’ is a daily custom throughout
most of South America. It is also a social ceremony where
the same bowl of mate’ and bombilla (or metal straw), are
passed around in a circle offering hospitality and good
will, much like the American Calumet, or piece pipe
ceremony. Quecha Indians taught the Spanish conquerors to
drink mate’. Indians gathered the small green leaves from
an Evergreen tree (part of the holly family), that grows
wild in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Today yerbe is grown
on plantations. Yerbe leaves are dried and ground into a
course mixture and left to age for nine months before use.
The mate’ is a dried hollowed out gourd, a vessel for
brewing ground yerbe leaves in hot water. Mates and
bombillas can be ornate and expensive, and those made of
silver are rare and sought after by collectors. Each couple
in our group received a mate’ filled with yerbe leaves and
hot water. Willy and I liked the taste and asked for refills
of hot water. Before the trip ended, Willy purchased a
mate’ and bombilla set to take home. I found bags of loose
yerbe, as well as, yerbe tea bags at a local health food
store back home. Sometimes in the afternoon, we still relax
and reminisce over a good mate’ yerbe.
When everyone finished drinking their mate’, we
went outside to enjoy marshmallows toasted over a barbeque
pit in the front lawn. Rocky’s delicious homemade
huckleberry brandy was passed around and savored. Overhead
in the star filled night, we could distinguish stars in the
shape of a cross in the southern sky.
An early morning drive east on International Highway
225, took us to Vicent Rosales National Park. We spent the
entire day exploring this oldest of Chile’s national
parks. From Pilar, we learned that one third of the country
is set aside as national parks and preserves. All morning
long, spectacular views of Lake Lanquihue’ and snow coned
Osorno followed us throughout the park. The only detraction
was the ugly sight of prolific yellow Gorse bushes that
lined long stretches of the park road and much of the Lake
District. The original settlers burned off brush to clear
the land for farming, and then discovered that the soil
washed away without natural growth to hold it back. Hearty
Gorse from Scotland was introduced to hold the soil. The
Gorse spread so quickly and wildly that it could not be
contained even with routine burning.
About 180 families live on 6,000 acre fondos inside
the park, where they grow potatoes and dairy products. Their
fenced in properties often have cattle and horses grazing in
green fields along the roadside. Typically, their houses of
redwood with Alpine trim and lace curtains covering tall
windows, presented a tidy, well maintained appearance.
The bus pulled off the road and into the driveway of
the Weiss family’s farm. Their two story redwood home had
an enclosed front porch restaurant where people, who rented
cabins on the property, came for meals. There was a garage,
several sheds and a large red barn behind the farmhouse. The
Weiss’ raised lamas, sheep, cows and chickens in fields
that stretched for acres back into the hills. We enjoyed
taking turns holding and petting a litter of two week old
puppies, while their mother kept a fixed, but gentle eye on
us. A pair of backyard swings offered a great opportunity
for having fun. We discovered that sitting in the swings and
taking a running jump off a large wooden platform, sent the
swings zooming down cable like wires that carried us several
hundred exciting yards down the back lawn.
From their front lawn, the Weiss family had a million
dollar view of snow capped Osorno, our next destination.
Pilar informed us that Osorno is a 200,000 year old,
compound volcano. She related a tale about a Mapuche
medicine man who explained to his tribe that volcanic
eruptions were the workings of the demon spirit of the snow.
The demon was very angry at being imprisoned in the mountain
and his wrath grew, until it finally exploded in a volcanic
eruption that set him free to demonize the Mapuche people
living in the area.
Evergreen Beeches and Coique’ trees that grow near
water and often have life spans of two hundred years,
crowded the forest floor at the foot of the volcano. Dense
trees became spare and slowly disappeared as the bus climbed
Osorno’s steep, 8,600 foot side. The driver ground gears
as the bus labored to climb the narrow winding road that
switched back and forth across the volcano at least a dozen
times. Halfway up the mountainside, there was nothing but
gravel and burnt cinders from the 1932 eruption. The road
ended abruptly about three quarters of the way to the top.
Osorno’s snow covered ice cap stood formidably
above. A chair lift carried skiers and tourists close to the
top nearly all year round. Ubiquitous Lake Lanquihue’ lay
7,000 feet below, down Osorno’s mountainside. Copper
sulfate from the glaciers had turned her waters an
intriguing emerald green.
A few agile group members decided to trek across the
volcano to catch a glimpse of two more volcanoes that Evon
had told them were on Osorno’s other side. I followed the
hikers for a few hundred yards, but turned back when the
narrow path of cinders began to flake off under me and roll
down the mountain. Willy went on with the hikers who
descended into a valley and crossed over another ridge. When
he returned, he said that the trail over red and black
cinders was strenuous and it felt, as if he was walking on
ball bearings.
The tour bus crossed over the park road and turned
down a dirt spur, before continuing on to areas that
revealed surprisingly different landscapes. A narrow fast
moving river, energized by spring’s glacial melt, ran
alongside the bumpy dirt road. Across the coursing river,
mountains of layered, charcoal grey rock rose abruptly to a
height of six hundred feet. A few scrawny trees had managed
to grow in cracks in the rock surface and were scattered
across the mountainsides. Huge Huckleberry bushes grew in
abundance along the roadside and in open areas up to the
forest’s edge. The dense Beech forest provided food and
shelter to the park’s animal residents that included
foxes, beavers, wild boars and pumas.
It was noon when we arrived at a beautiful emerald
lake that lay at the foot of two snow capped glaciers. Todos
Los Santos, or Lake of All Saints, was named for the
Jesuits, who in 1636, stopped there long enough to build a
chapel. The Jesuit priests were on their way to Argentina,
where they put down their strongest roots by establishing
Catholic colleges that still thrive as important centers of
culture and learning today.
A hotel lodge on the lake’s edge, provided an
excellent meal of poached salmon. While we enjoyed lunch,
Evon told us that we were less than one hundred miles from
the place where Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, crossed over the
Andes on horseback and escaped to Argentina. Neruda was old
and sick at the time and a fugitive from the Chilean
Government. A few good friends led Neruda over the
mountains, while he lay unconscious and strapped to his
horse for most of the journey, due to his extremely poor
health. Today, it takes travelers about twenty hours to make
the journey to Argentina through a series of bus rides
overland and boat rides across six or seven lakes.
A walk on the wide delta like beach behind the hotel
revealed the point where the lake’s glacial waters poured
into a river basin. We followed the beach as it curved
around the lake and were rewarded with views that showed the
immense size of the Lake of All Saints and the towering
height of the two glaciers on its opposite shore. On the
walk back to the hotel, we noticed the ugly, dangling boughs
of golden Gorse that encroached on the beach and trespassed
into hotel garden areas. Even the stone walls built by hotel
owners to keep the invaders at bay were largely ineffective.
Petrohue’ Falls was only a twenty minute ride from Todos
Los Santos. In the Mapuche language, “petro hue” means
“misty place”. It is the place that received the most
glacial melt. Water flowed down from the glaciers gathering
tremendous force. Over time, the water carved channels right
through the huge, pitted black rocks in its path. As the
rushing water pounded over the rocks to the river below, it
sent a spray of watery mist several feet into the air. The
water spray close to the falls felt both cooling and
refreshing in the full heat of the afternoon sun.
The park had constructed safety railings of metal and
wire around several viewing points along the chain of black
rocks that extended far out into the river. From these
points we noticed that several falls, or channels in the
rocks, were spread out across the river. None of them were
more than twenty feet high. Falls closer to the shore
received less water and were narrower that falls in
mid-river.
Several miles away stood Osorno with its perfect
conical top mysteriously obscuring any evidence of its
eruption in 1832, as if nothing had happened nearly two
hundred years ago. Yet, the real evidence of Osorno’s
eruption lay in the molten lava that had poured down in
rivers and left the black pitted rocks we were now standing
on.
We stayed there awhile, soaking in the majestic
scenery, knowing that it was our last chance to explore this
fascinating combination of volcanoes, glaciers and lakes.
Tomorrow afternoon, we would be on an hour and a half flight
from Puerto Montt to Santiago.
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