Crossing the border into Chile once again was a piece of cake, we know the drill exactly, old hands. The border is on top of a mountain range and when descending into Chile the change in landscape was apparent. Where Argentina was dry, Chile was lush and green, the rain doesn’t make it over the mountains too often. We had read in our guidebook that the area on this border was ‘Mapuche’ area, the indigenous people who are still getting a very bad deal in Chile. We stopped at a small town called Curarrehue where 80% of the people are Mapuche. There is a little museum and a Mapuche restaurant. We had a great lunch here, it started off with sopapillas, assort of deep fried bread with spreads. The bread reminded me much of ‘oliebollen’, a Dutch New Years tradition. For our main Julia had a soup with local ingredients and I had a sort of stew with a large piece of cow meat and a lot of coriander, it was all very tasty.

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