Parks and fall colours

Maggie at the waterfalls

Today we were hosted by the Molina Club. Molina is a town of about 32ooo people just outside of Curico. We headed off to a winery first of all and saw a bit more of the process of wine making and certainly saw a larger scale and more automated production process than we have seen before. It was a bit difficult because usually one person in the group is able to catch most of the Spanish and help the others out, but this morning we were all having a bad-language day and so we stared a little bit blankly at the poor man who was giving us the tour. We asked the man in charge of the tasting what wines were preferred by North Americans and he first said ´no preference´, but then followed that up with ´they like wines they can open and drink immediately´. We are known as discrimating oeniphiles throughout the world it seems....

Some of the seven tazas

After tasting a couple of wines, we headed off to the pre-Cordillera to see the Siete Tazas and the Parque Ingles and to have lunch at a ´refugio´. The tazas are pools that were formed by a combination of volcanic rock and the action of water and they are filled with water that is the most extraordinatry aquamarine blue colour. It was really breathtaking. The fall colours were really lovely and the guarda-parques (park ranger or warden depending on your country of origin) gave us a talk about the purposes of parks and reserves in Chile and about some of the flora and fauna of importance in this region and in other parts of the country. He was very clear and we got a lot out of his talk and slideshow. Afterwards, I went up to talk to him and discovered he was the first Chilean biologist that I have met. There are a few professions here that are dominant amongst the professional circles in which we are mostly travelling and biologist is not one of those. The major professions are : lawyer, doctor, engineer, accountant or businessperson, architect or dentist. When I say major professions, these are the jobs that every parent in Chile wants their child to have so that they can have a good quality of life. I don´t know if this stat is true, but I was told by my host family here that 70% of Chileans do not own their place of residence and that is very hard for other professions to get by in the present economy.

After a lovely, though short, walk in the woods of the fall forest of robles (oaks), we headed off for lunch up in the Parque Ingles, which despite its name is actually a reserve. Reserves have less protection than parks here and it is hoped that this reserve may become a park this year in commemoration of an anniversary for parks.

All for now-Robyn