www.thegilmours.co.uk

Last weekend, we travelled 1000km with friends, to spent 4 days in the south of Chile, on the shores of Lago Llanquihue. We didn’t just go for a holiday, but to meet with over 100 people who own or share an interest in Land Rovers, those typically unreliable but fun 4×4s! It was an International meet, with more than 6 vehicles arriving from Argentina!

The weekend started with a large meal at a wonderful restaurant, Espantapajaros (see earlier blog on this subject). On Saturday, we all made a “paseo” which involves a lot of queuing, then moving, in convoy along a predetermined route, delighting local people with our vehicles (especially restored vehicles or those which appear ready to invade a small country) but annoying any other hapless road users!

We took a beautiful route, by the north and east side of the Lake to the foot of Volcan Osorno and then to the foot of another volcano, Volcan Calbuco, where we took a short safari and walk to a nearby waterfall and then sat down to a huge lunch. We were served a typical southern dish, Curanto, which might not look very attractive- a net bag of clams, mussels, chicken, pork and spicy sausages- but which tastes phenomenal.

On the sunday we recovered a little, spending a morning exploring under the bonnets of each Land Rover, whose ages ranged from 38 to less than 1 year old. And then eating cake before returning home, some overnight, others through the night!

But it wasn’t in vain- we got into the local newspaper, El Llanquihue! Twice!

I’ve been searching for a way to display slideshows of our pictures off-site for some time. And i’ve finally found a way! I hope you enjoy this slideshow of pictures from the weekend. More slideshows to follow!

The Highlights

Meet the Land Rovers….

In early february at the end of the school holidays, Doug went with two teacher friends to the south of Chile, some 800km from Santiago, to do a three day hike in a National Park. It was a great opportunity to get to know Carey and Naomi better and to escape the heat of Santiago and stresses of working by internet in Chile!

Its a tongue twister of a name, but Parque Nacional Huerquehue (phoenetically “werkewe”) is a beautiful park east of Pucon and Lago Villarrica. In addition to day trails, a 3 day trail is on offer, camping in the wilderness and reaching some thermal springs on the second day. It is around 15km to the campsite from the carpark, 22km round trip to the thermal springs and another 15km back to the base, passing at least 5 lakes and walking through a variety of landscapes. The most memorable are ancient Araucaria forests.

Araucaria trees (Monkey Puzzle trees), are native to Chile (at least to Patagonia) and are some of the most hardy trees around. They are, literally, indestructible, although they grow very, very slowly. Indeed, you can find specimens of more than 2000 years old, with girths of 6 metres. These enormous trees rise to over 100m and have survived numerous earthquakes, nearby volcanic eruptions, pyroclastic clouds, ash falls, snow falls and severe icing! In fact, just about everything nature can throw at a tree.

You might notice the absence of Rachel on this trip… I certainly did. It was very unfair, but Rachel was on a shift at Paranal and the school holidays could offer no more possibilities for our teacher friends…. So off we went, three of us.

I’ve just returned from a chat with our concierge.

While talking, we were interupted by a neigbour and her 3 year old who asked: “is it cold outside?”. The concierge replied, sweating as he wrote a receipt for me and having his breakfast at the same time, “yes, its really cold…. ch ch ch… really cold. You need to wrap her up well this morning”.

Sure enough, the neighbour pulled a scarf out of her bag and the girl left the building cosy warm.

I tried not to laugh. “hace frio”?? Really?

I returned to the flat, checked the thermometer: 25C. Hardly frosty.
We’re shivering as we eat our breakfast on the balcony, honestly. But there is a collective fear of the cold amongst chileans, that results in them wearing many layers while we wander around in shorts and Tshirts “making them feel cold”. It turns your average granny’s advice in Scotland on its head!

Is is just me or is the BBC website really slow? Go on, try it… by clicking on that link…. or this one.

Maybe they’ve put it on the slow route to Chile or perhaps it is competing for bandwidth with the Cricket World Cup (no mention of the Scotland-Australia score yesterday), but the site will not load in any of our browsers today. I’ve reverted to reading my favourite newspaper, The Guardian online, Christian Today news, Top Gear magazine and Land Rover International….

Now, about the cricket (Dave)…. Australia weren’t too hot, and the rain didn’t save Scotland from a defeat. 203 runs short of the Aussies and all out was rather disappointing, but generally, their play wasn’t. Indeed, they fielded very well. Lets hope they learn how to bat before they face South Africa or Holland (although they might not need to worry about the latter Linde!).

Well i’ve been quiet at work this week, so i have been exploring the graphics capability of Joomla, an alternative website platform to Wordpress. I use Wordpress for this site and for other sites i’ve developed in Chile.

Joomla seems very similar to Wordpress and even uses an embedded Wordpress blog! It is open source developed although it appears that fewer themes are available for free and they are generally less flexible/editable.

The list of extensions to Joomla is quite incredible- there are so many gallery possibilities, including modules, components, plugins… all with multi-language capabilities. They look really exciting.

I’ll have a go with Joomla and i may even transfer our site into Joomla as an experiment. Of course, work might pick up again, in which case i’ll have to drop another commitment, like youth group, reading the bible, my wife or just reading the news.

Watch this space.