3/14/23

What an incredible day. I Left the hotel started down a beautiful Rd with lots of curves, lots of far reaching views, and when I first saw San Jose volcano I couldn’t believe it was such a beautiful site with three no less glaciers on it

On the way back down, I saw that roadside stand where I met Javier and Maria and it was being run by two ladies and a guy who is in charge of the rock store down below that. We had a great conversation all about mostly about mining destroying the country, because Javier told them that he was a mining engineer, so that was an interesting, political discussion which I managed to keep up with About half way since they were speaking regular speed to each other. I had a conversation before they got going on that so I was OK just trying to follow along.

And then I I passed this hotel that I’m in now which I had passed the night before andI hadn’t stayed here because the gate was closed. I thought they were already closed for the season that’s why I stayed at the other place with the noisy little yappy dogs but then on the way back today I saw the gate was open so I came in and yeah they had a room. What a cool hotel. Totally French even got empty cheese containers from France stuck up on the walls. Even the music I’m listening to right now it’s French and it’s actually pretty good.

Maria and i behind the waterfall

From Javier’s size you can see how high the waterfall is, not a lot of water, but still pretty high

Always taking advantage of the sun when it’s out on my side to dry whatever I’ve washed

Leaving the waterfall Road

View from my hotel window

The place I wanted to stay that already closed for the season little cabins with the front windows looking right at the three glaciers on San Jose volcano And this is only half a mile from the end of the paved road

Pretty big river running through the center of the canyon

at places where the water comes down off the mountain in a flood and high speed with a lot of volume it rips up the roads so their solution which seems to be working out pretty good is lay, heavy rocks down in the gullies where the water comes out

This is about where the paved road ends and you can see in the background the place where all these yellow trucks are coming out of carrying gravel for house, construction or road construction or whatever

This was the tunnel that I thought used to be the old road before they built the one that cars on and then they stopped using it but after I came back, I talked to two women at the other end who said no that people still use it, especially motorcycles, but had no lights and I didn’t want to fall down in the narrow tunnel with possible potholes so I avoided it

In the background on the right under the cloud cover is San Jose volcano

This is a little roadside stand a couple miles from the end of the road where I met Javier and his wife, and we had an adventure together which you’ll hear about further on in the photos The reason I took this picture was you can see the white sign says Bano 500 pesos and I’m thinking oh wow this must be a hot spring bath because there are a whole bunch of Hot Springs around the area and so I said to the guy is it hot water he said no cold water and I said what and after I went up into the restaurant above this place I talked to Javier my new friend and he said no no no that’s a bathroom I thought oh they’re charging to use the bathroom, but I just jumped to the conclusion it was a hot spring for cheap money so that was joke on me

At the end of the paved road is this sign, which tells you what to do in the event of an eruption from the volcano

I saw this on the way up but I didn’t stop because the road was really bad and I didn’t want to go up on my own and fall over so I just took this picture but then when I came back after I met Javier and his wife, I stopped here and he stopped and I said do you want to go together so we all decided to go out there and we got up about couple hundred yards before he couldn’t go any further and I couldn’t either the potholes are huge and the rocks are everywhere along with sand, so we just parked and then walked about a half a mile so I am doing a little hiking on this trip and there you can see in the picture below, where we were parked until we went up forever by foot

Doesn’t look that bad in this picture, but it was further up. You definitely would’ve had a hard time going up in four-wheel-drive, even pictures are deceiving and this was taken before we had to stop. We had quite a time turning my bike around in fact.

Example of geodesic dome cabins with pointy tops

That little village behind me is right below that giant crop of rocks, which in an earthquake, I don’t think I would want to be there.

I’ve seen millions of these alongside the roads all over Chile but I still haven’t found out what their significance is

This was at the other end of the tunnel, where I talked to those two ladies and evidently some guy got killed in the tunnel and he has a heck of a memorial here

This is a picture of the little restaurant and house where the two women I met were serving Javier and his wife empanadas and it looked pretty good so she asked me what kind I wanted and I said goat cheese and she looked at me like really I said yeah, I like goat cheese and tomatoes, lots of tomatoes to offset the cheese and it was the best empanada I’ve ever had and it was twice as big as ones I’ve ever seen in the states.

In the center, glacier on San Jose volcano the clouds are covering just a peek of one on the right and it’s covering the on the left

water to deal with crossing the road

A memorial to someone’s husband she wrote a very

touching letter to her hubby

This guy next to the river, while I was taking the photo, was opening up his truck, every kind of vegetable you can name plus a bunch of candies on the shelf, bunch of biscuits and rice you name it, this truck was packed to the max

A lot of flatland in this valley with the river going through along the backside there where the trees are so they have dozens of horses out there, grazing

Another view of that village, where they could be in a bad situation, if there was an earthquake

Javier and his wife as we are walking back down the path that we hadn’t noticed when we started up it was only like 100 feet away. You can see on the left a bunch of rocks so we couldn’t see this so we could’ve just driven up there easily. Unfortunately we missed it though

As you can see a lot easier way up this way

Here I’m waiting for Javier to see if he wants to go up with me

End of the gravel, even though it looks like there’s a paved section where the white car is but that is short paved section just for the trucks entering and exiting the gravel pits

This is a stream which joins the river below, but it’s being used for drinking water by all the people in the area

More goats and sheep on the road, also saw two horses on the road

Leaving the area view, and now all three glaziers, equality cloud covered

The empanada place with the ever present DIRECTV dish

Had already taken a big bite out of it before remembering to show how big it was in relation to the bottle

I warning sign, not to trash the waterfall area

Evidently these Hot Springs around this area are very sulphurized because as you can see in the picture, the sulfur, his completely discolored all the rocks from the top of the hill to the bottom