21st January 2007 - Day 296

Set off from Chillan to Pucon in another air-conditioned bus. Arrived at Pucon late in the evening, stayed at a nice hostel ´Hostel donde Jerman´ just outside the town. Pucon is full of tourists, its has a very austrian ski resort feel. The towns building are made of wood, wood and more wood. A very nice place to stop for a few days and do some volcano climbing, whitewater rafting, kayaking or horse trekking, loads of things to keep you occupied or not.

22nd January 2007 - Day 297

Spent the day wandering around the many crafty shops and sat in a few cafe-bars for a drink and some food. Strolled along the black sands of the very choppy lake. Not much else, very relaxing.

23rd January 2007 - Day 298

Headed off on our half day horse trekking around the Parque Nacional Villarria. Beautiful. My horse - Pulka was very lazy and seemed not to like being with the other horses so this left me trailing behind the rest of the group most of the time. Pauls horse - Canela (or Camilla as Paul kept calling her) was meant to be the stroppy horse, she didn´t like any of the other horses and was kept away from them to stop her fighting. Canela was actually fine and seemed to do what Paul instructed her to do unlike mine who was very lazy and preferred to walk most of the way. Anyway enough about the horses, the scenary was spectacular, it was an amazing way to experience the mountains, rivers and forest.

24th January 2007 - Day 299

Woke up a little sore from the horse riding, decided to hit the internet cafe and download some of our many pictures only to sadly realise that we had left the Ipod on the bus from Chillan 3 days ago. Managed to get the hostel owner to come to the bus station with us to speak to the staff. They said that nothing had been handed in, we are soooooo gutted, we must have had about 1000 plus pictures of our trip - 9 months worth of pictures. This was a very grey day!!! Filled in a police report and headed back to the hostel as we didn´t really feel like doing anything. In the evening spoke to the hostel owner who said he would speak to the manager of the bus company and see what he could do, this cheered us up a little. But its such a long shot.

25th January 2007 - Day 300

Reluctantly left Pucon, without our Ipod. But there is not much we can do, its very unlikely we´ll see it again. Headed to Valdivia where we planned to spend a few days before setting off to a few more places in Chile. Spent the first few hours looking around the harbour and the fish market. Went to see the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo across the harbour. The building is amazing, it is constructed on the foundations of the former Cerveceria Anwandter brewery which crumbled during the 1960s earthquake. The new use of the building as a modern art gallery is so apt, the old crumbling building with the new modern displays of art. The display space is a combination of rusty metal columns with newly white washed walls - really cool.

Got invited to the evening opening of two new exhibitions in the art gallery (..... have to fill in the names at a later date). One exhibition - paintings by a Israel artist were very moody, mostly black and white images of what we could work out as images of fighting. Cool though. The other exhibition was a display of flashing images 1) of empty streets, stalls, shops; 2) images of a young women dressed in a traditional dress of muslim women, but this was then stripped and the female appeared naked. 3) Images of a male lying in a street as if he had been shot - or was dead, with people walking past making no attempt to see if he was alright. We were not sure of the symbolism of these images possibly associated with war and violence becoming the reality of the world today, so as to go unnoticed by passerbys. Maybe!!!