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 19^th 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.