Chile Is Kuchen Country

When contemplating Patagonia, travelers eagerly anticipate the lakes, forests, mountains, fjords and other wildlands of this scenic, thinly populated region. Until they actually arrive, though, they don’t usually give much thought to the food that will sustain them – except for Argentine beef and Chilean seafood, the cuisines of both countries have a low profile, but be ready for some surprises.

In the northern hemisphere winter, fresh fruit from southernmost South America – such as blueberries and raspberries – has become a common sight in supermarkets. In season, in Chile, these and other fruits give their flavors to kuchen, the Germanic goodies that owe their origins to-19th century immigrants who settled throughout a lakes district that stretches several hundred miles from the city of Temuco south to Puerto Montt, the home port for ferries to southernmost Patagonia.

Kuchen – a word that Chileans pronounce similarly to the original German, but do not capitalize as a proper noun – are a common dessert on Patagonian cruises, but they’re readily available throughout the country. Chileans devour them at onces (“elevenses”), a late afternoon tea that bridges the time between lunch and a relatively late dinner.

Chilean kuchen are diverse, ranging from pies to pastries to coffee cakes and cheesecakes, but my own favorites have more filling than crust – particularly if that filling is berries, but a strudel-like version is also common. Some people enjoy the presence of caramelized manjar (the Chilean word for dulce de leche), but that’s too sickly sweet for my taste.

There are quality kuchen almost everywhere, but I’ll offer a few recommendations here. Only 20 minutes from Puerto Montt, the lakeside town of Puerto Varas has multiple bakeries and a summer artisan’s market (pictured above) whose kuchen stands are a big attraction. A bit farther north, known for its stunningly modern theater, the village of Frutillar features the tiny but tasty Kuchenladen and a formal teahouse, surrounded by lavender, that goes by the name Lavanda.

Kuchenladen has a branch in the more northerly resort of Pucón, where Cassis (pictured near top) is also a good choice; in the Aisén regional capital of Coyhaique the best choice is Café de Mayo. Farther south, at Puerto Natales, try the Kau Lodge’s Coffeemaker (pictured below); in Punta Arenas, go for Chocolatta.

On the Road Again? Southbound from Santiago

After a frustrating time in Santiago, where an overpowering virus of some kind kept me confined to a friend’s house – I don’t think she expected to spend nearly two weeks as my nurse – I was finally able to hit the road on Sunday, though I only made it as far as Talca, about 250 km south of the Chilean capital. The best thing was that I was able to spend a night at Casa Chueca, one of my favorite accommodations in the entire country – occupying a former vineyard, it’s spread over a park-like environment of seven hectares that was a welcome respite from the red-hot streets of Santiago.

Then, yesterday, I continued to Pucón – a longer drive but, the farther south I got, the weather continued to cool, though it was still very summerish. From my window at Hostería ¡École!, I have an obstructed view of Volcán Villarrica, which is presently closed to climbers, but barely any wisps of smoke are visible around the crater.

I’m only passing through here, en route to Puerto Montt to catch the Navimag ferry to Puerto Natales on Friday, with a brief stopover at Puerto Octay. For the moment, though, I’m going to post some observations on driving in Chile from the roughly 750 km I’ve driven in the past couple days. Some of this is anecdotal, so bear with me if I sometimes oversimplify.

1) Compared to Argentine drivers, many of whom are very aggressive, Chilean drivers are relatively sedate, but that can have its downside. Where there are three lanes on the freeway, the slowest drivers often occupy the middle lane, which means that faster drivers go around them on both sides. Where there are two lanes, they sometimes choose the fast lane; this is not something I adapt to easily, so I can’t afford even a short lapse in attention.

2) At this time of year, many young Chileans take to the road, but not many of them have cars – instead, they are hitchhiking, often in very dangerous spots alongside the highway. Given that I have hitchhiked these roads myself, longer ago than I care to admit, I sympathize with them but I rarely give anybody a lift now. They often travel in groups of three or even more, and think that I have plenty of room in my SUV, but I don’t – it’s full of books, papers, baggage and tools, or at least that’s my rationalization.

3) Some time ago, I wrote about the irony that, in Chile’s roadside servicentros, WiFi was usually free but they charged to use the bathrooms – usually a nominal fee, but there was always a person to collect before you could enter to relieve yourself. Fortunately, that appears to have ended; presumably, Copec, Shell and Petrobras have decided that their gasoline sales and concessions now pay well enough to subsidize the cost of cleaning the baños, and that people will make additional stops for convenience. That’s a win-win, in my opinion.

4) This has been a tough fire season, not unusual in the Chilean summer, but it was most notable in the Araucania region just north of the regional capital of Temuco. Near the town of Mulchén, where the native Mapuche have long been vocal about land claims and there have been instances of arson in the past, large stands of eucalyptus and Monterey pine – non-native commercial timber species – were virtually denuded. The eucalyptus have a chance to resprout, but the pines are likely to be a total loss.

Clearing the Air: Pollution in the Southern Cone

Earlier this week, the World Health Organization released a report on air pollution in 1,100 cities around the world, which it says contribute to respiratory problems and 1.34 million premature deaths per annum. Unsurprisingly, it’s cities in densely populated Asian countries, specifically Iran, India and Pakistan, that have the world’s worst air quality, due largely to dirty fuels that include firewood and coal, and poorly monitored motor vehicles.

The WHO calculates its rankings on the basis of airborne particles smaller than ten micrometers, with a recommended upper limit of 20. By that standard, the Iranian city of Ahvaz has the world’s worst air quality, at 372 grams micrograms per cubic meter. At the other extreme, Santa Fe, New Mexico, registered only six micrograms per cubic meter and Washington DC measured 18.

By these standards, Southern Cone cities, particularly those in Chile, come off not so good but less than catastrophic – at least compared with their Asian counterparts. Chile, of course, is a mining country and, on top of that, its geography is unfavorable: like Southern California, Santiago and other heartland cities lie in a basin between a coast range and the high Andes, which traps particulate matter. This gives Santiago (pictured above, after a winter storm has cleared the air) the country’s second-highest figure, with a reading of 69. Only Rancagua, about an hour south, has a higher reading, at 74; Rancagua not only has a similar geography to Santiago, but suffers from its proximity to the huge El Teniente copper mine in the Andean foothills to the east.

Most heartland cities are in a similar plight: Talca (pictured above) registered 49 and Chillán 52. Of the northern mining cities, the port of Antofagasta (pictured below) was the most polluted, with a reading of 55, while Calama measured only 50 – despite the presence of the gigantic open-pit copper mine at nearby Chuquicamata. The southern city of Temuco had a surprisingly low figure of 49, given that its residents use so much firewood for heating and cooking.

While all these figures are higher than desirable, they’re not alarmingly high like the Asian and all are below the global average of 79. The figures also can be misleading because they are not geographically specific – the air quality in Santiago’s poorer western neighborhoods, for instance, is worse than the richer eastern barrios. While that’s deplorable in terms of environmental justice, at best, it also means it will not affect most visitors. It’s those who have to live there that suffer most.

Across the Andes, things are a bit better. I’ve long argued against the clichéd depiction of Buenos Aires (pictured above) as the “Paris of the South,” but in one sense that’s true – according to the WHO, its reading of 38 is identical to the French capital. Across the Río de la Plata, Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo (pictured below) checked in only a little worse, with a reading of 39.

Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires in Millbrae (San Mateo County)

Thursday September 29 will mark the last of four digital slide presentations on the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, at various branches of the San Mateo Public Library. This event starts at 1 p.m. at the Millbrae Library (1 Library Avenue, Millbrae, CA 94030, tel. 650/697-7607). There will be ample time for questions and answers, and books (also including Moon Argentina and Moon Chile) will be on sale (at a discount).

Next month, I will be on the road promoting the new third edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia. Most of the events will be in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I will also be appearing in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington; Vancouver BC; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Pasadena, California. Watch this space for details.

Tuesday Topics

Today entry includes items from Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

A White Xmas? In Summer?
In the course of my research, I rarely spend the year’s end holidays at home with family - unless somehow we get together with my wife’s relatives in Olavarría, in Buenos Aires province. In southern South America, of course, it’s summer, and you’re likelier to need air-conditioning than a shovel to clear the snow off the sidewalk (leaving aside, for the moment, that we live in coastal California where snow is always rare).

To be sure, if you seek out the heights of the Andes, you may have a white Xmas (when I lived at 4,400 meters above sea level in Parinacota (pictured above), Chile, summer was the rainy season and, at that altitude it could easily snow). Likewise, if you seek out high latitudes on the Southern Continental Icefield, you can virtually guarantee it. But I was nevertheless surprised last Saturday by a snowstorm in Parque Nacional Conguillío, in the relatively low-altitude, mid-latitude Andes east of Temuco. At 5 p.m., conditions threatened to become a whiteout, and I quickly headed down and south to the town of Melipeuco, where it was cold and damp but snow-free.

En route, though, I saw snow-covered monkey puzzle trees of the sort that drew pioneer conservationist John Muir here from California in the early 20th century. Even more strikingly, the volcanic slag heaps (pictured below) on the lower slopes of Volcán Llaima (whose steaming summit was obscured by cloud) turned from black to white in minutes. Except for rangers and park administrator Norberto Arias, with whom I briefly spoke in his office at Laguna Conguillío, I was the only person in the park. It warmed on Sunday, though, and the prospect of a white Xmas is receding by the minute - though, as I’m continuing farther south, it could still happen.

Gaucho Gil Crosses the Border
My brief Conguillío excursion came at the end of long day’s drive that began near Curacautín, at the outstanding Bavarian-run guesthouse Andenrose, and proceeded to circle the park via Malalcahuello, Lonquimay, Liucura and Icalma. En route, I stopped to photograph this shrine to the Gaucho Antonio Gil, a Robin Hood figure and folk saint from Argentina’s Corrientes province whose cult has grown in the aftermath of that country’s economic meltdown of a decade ago.

This was the first time, though, I have ever seen a Gaucho Gil shrine in Chile - a country that’s been almost untouched by regional and global financial crises. To be sure, the highway itself links Chile to the Argentine province of Neuquén but, even then, it’s jarring to see the Chilean flag flying above Gil’s shrine.

The Falklands Tussac Grass
Jim McAdam, the editor of the Falkland Islands Journal with whom I have corresponded for many years but never met (we just missed each other a couple weeks ago, as I was in the departure lounge at Mount Pleasant as he arrived from Punta Arenas), recently explored Argentine Tierra del Fuego in search of Falklands tussac grass, Poa flabellata. Once abundant throughout the Islands, the grass is exceptional wildlife habitat, especially for small birds - watch for the lurking sea lions, though - but much reduced by unrestricted grazing since the introduction of sheep in the 19th century.

According to Jim, tussac ranges from South Georgia through the Falklands to eastern Tierra del Fuego (including Staten Island and the Wollastons), but “it is only thought to be present at one site on actual mainland Tierra del Fuego - the tip of the Mitre Peninsula near Cabo San Diego. We didn't make it, though, despite a three-day expedition on a quad bike.” He is interested in tussac’s DNA, to see if all came from the same original population.

Crusoe's Tsunami

I have just returned to Buenos Aires from Santiago, where I spent two-plus days exploring Chile’s post-quake capital and barely had time to sleep, let alone write any extensive blog posts. Within a few days, I’ll have a summary up, but for the moment I’ll just note that things are returning to normal - despite a brief Sunday night blackout that extended from the Atacama desert town of Taltal in the north to the archipelago of Chiloé in the south - and that flying out of Santiago’s Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez was utterly routine, even if the main international terminal building remains closed.

At present, I would not hesitate to visit Chile’s top destinations - San Pedro de Atacama, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), and Torres del Paine. These sites were left totally untouched by the February 27 quake, and intending visitors should have no qualms whatsoever about traveling there. The southerly lakes district, just beyond the quake zone, is up and running as well, but overland transportation is slower than usual because of highway damage between Santiago and Temuco. At the moment, flying into Temuco or Puerto Montt and then traveling far shorter overland distances to popular towns such as Pucón and Puerto Varas would be a better option.

One place I would not recommend visiting, though, is one of my favorite destinations in the country. On Isla Robinson Crusoe, the biggest island in the Juan Fernández archipelago, the post-quake tsunami swamped the immediate shoreline of San Juan Bautista, the island’s only settlement. For a community of only about 600 people, the loss of just a few lives was devastating, and several if not most of its tourist facilities were destroyed, as can be seen in the FACh (Chilean Air Force) aerial photographs provided me by a Santiago friend, conservationist Hernán Torres. To enlarge the before-and-after photos for more detail, just click on the image.

According to spokesman Miguel Díaz Gacitúa of CONAF (Chile’s national park service), with whom I spoke on Tuesday in his Santiago office, the island’s airstrip is undamaged, but San Juan’s tiny port facilities will need an emergency replacement. Presumably, all rebuilding in the village will take place beyond the line of tsunami damage.

Díaz Gacitúa adds, by the way, that there has been no noteworthy damage to any of Chile’s national parks or other protected areas - even in the hardest-hit regions - and they are open for business as usual.