Friday, December 15, 2023

12/15-Contradictions in Chile

It’s cold here in Cerro Castillo…okay for today because we are still inside a warm and cozy cabaña. It is confusing to the mind and body. On the one hand, it’s December. It should be cold. But, this is the southern hemisphere, and it is summer (or late late Spring anyway). The days are long, but it’s still cold. There are leaves on the trees, and there are flowers, so my eyes see Spring, but to my body it feels like winter. Kinda weird feeling. 

After breakfast, we went out to get the food we need for the next few days. I think we went to four different mercados, but we managed to get everything we needed (except carrots). I even found canned pollo! Cerro Castillo is a fairly small village, and yet, it seems to have everything one might need. There are something like 6 mercados in total (at lest that we’ve seen).

Small mercado tucked in between a couple of bigger casas. 

There are a few restaurants one of which we will go to tonight. There’s a “brunch” restaurant. It closes at 11:00…PM! There’s a lavandería, and, of course, multiple cabañas. 

Villa Cerro Castillo is considered a “frontier” town. There are new structures here and there. Not surprising as the Carratera is only about 15 years old. Markus was saying if someone wanted to start a business here, now would be the time to do it…get in on the ground floor, so to speak. 

La Plaza looks pretty new. 

This is a small place, but had a lot of souvenir and artisan things (including some very expensive chocolate…10,000clp for one bar). Oh, and if you want to use the baño…500clp. 

There are a couple of playgrounds too. 

Nice backdrop for a playground. 

This is a mural of Huemul on the gymnasium. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any in the wild yet. 

Today, I also took a couple of photos of the outside of where we are staying. 

The building in the front (red building) is the owner’s casa. The window in the back building is my room. 

We walk this dirt path to the door of our cabaña. The room straight ahead is where our bikes are living. 

Bruce decided to join us. 

Tomorrow it will be cloudy, and likely a decent headwind, but maybe some of it will be blocked by the climb we have…we’ll see…






No comments: