We arrived in Valdivia without any problems. We were able to book a hostel which was fortunate because it was indeed a holiday weekend. About every place was booked by the time we arrived. Now I'm not sure what holiday was being celebrated, but we were told there are many nontraditional ones throughout the year. Seems like a good excuse for three day weekends.
Valdivia has a population of about 130,000. It is located between rivers and surrounded by channels so it has a variety of flora and fauna. Two popular tourist activities are river boat tours and visits to the botanical garden. They also have a popular fish market (Mercado Fluvial) on the river. This attracts some sea lions which is rare because this is fresh water. They hang out here for the unwanted fish parts tossed at them by the fish venders.
One thing Valdivia is famous for is that it was the center of The Great Chilean Earthquake on May 22, 1960. Registering at a 9.5, it was the biggest earthquake ever recorded in history. There were four preceding shocks the day before registering over 7 and some after that were over a 5. Several days after the earthquake, a volcano erupted and continued to do so for a week. Our Villarica Volcano hike guide's father was from Valdivia and had experienced the earthquake. He had said that the ground had literally opened up and swallowed people and houses. About 1,655 people were killed, including those from the resulting tsunamis which hit Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines. Two million people were left homeless. There are still parts of the city that haven't recovered, but most has been rebuilt and the people, like the buildings are stronger.
Once we were settled and found something to eat, we walked to the botanical gardens. This was a lovely place and it was the perfect day to get out, move around and explore.
The walk toward the botanical gardens (one of Maeve's pics)
Lots to explore together (also a Maeve pic)
Interesting trees
The river in the far back of the gardens
The next day, we headed toward the fish/produce market. This is also the place where they sold river boat tours. We purchased our tickets and had about an hour before the tour. We had to visit this market. The colors and variety of food were amazing. Maeve couldn't take the smell, so she waited outside.
Our river boat tour was nice - nothing fabulous. They do longer tours that take five hours and go around more islands near Valdivia, but we didn't want to do that. Also, the tour guide only spoke Spanish, so we didn't catch much of what he said anyway.
The fish market from the river
Entering Valdivia from river
The kids were more interested in seeing the sea lions. So we stopped by to visit them.
Big guy waiting to be fed
The next day was Halloween. We only saw one house decorated, but we had seen plenty of stores in Santiago selling candy, decorations and masks for Halloween. As the day went on, we only saw two children dressed and trick-or-treating. Michael played his own little 'trick' on Liam. It didn't go over so well. (In case it loses something in the video below, Liam is excited that he gets a butterfly to land on him, then Michael yells that it's some poisonous Chilean butterfly and Liam gets a bit of a scare.)
We had some time to walk around the other part of Valdivia before the Pachamama bus met us at our hostel. We were able to see one of the older Spanish fortresses and some parks.
Spanish fortress
The bus was on time and we quickly got acquainted with our new travel companions en route to our next excursion. There was an Australian father and daughter, a young American college student, and a British girl. We were thrilled to see our new guide Rodrigo. He was the one who originally helped us book our bus tour tickets. He was incredibly helpful whereas our other guide barely spoke.
Rodrigo took us to this amazing Chilean BBQ. It was a regular weekend event that is popular with the locals. It was easy to see why with all of the local food specialties, live music and dancing.
Our travel mates had no problems digging into the assorted seafood platters. I stuck to the vegetarian empanadas and locally brewed Kuntsman Beer.
We were really happy with this excursion. Finding locally popular events was one big reason we booked a tour. We would have never found this type of venue on our own and we certainly couldn't have managed our way through it without our guide.
Feeling satisfied with our trip to Valdivia, we headed back to our hostel for the night. We would be leaving early in the morning for the southern-most part of this trip.