A Week In The Life

Summer is in full swing here in the southern hemisphere.  We arrived back from Argentina to find the sun blazing down on Cerro Castillo and clouds banished from the blue, blue sky.  We also found that Chile is still as unpredictable as ever.  Mary and Cristian were in Coyhaique and we were busy unpacking our gear when a truck pulled into the driveway.  This wasn't unusual, as people drop by to socialize or sell things or pick up horses every day of the week.  This time, however, the woman who got out had a puppy in her hands.  The little ball of fur couldn't have been more than five or six weeks old, teeth barely coming in and eyes still tinged blue.  Luckily I had Mary on the phone and she was able to translate that the little guy was indeed for them, and had been promised to them some while ago from the next litter.  With that cleared up, the woman handed me the puppy, got back in the truck, and left.

 Despite all my fears and full-on maternal mode, the puppy survived his first night snuggled up to a hot water bottle and has been thriving ever since.  We've named him Hayduke (Carl just finished reading "The Monkey Wrench Gang"), he's a full blooded Border Collie, and he's a big fan of following around the other dogs and wrestling with the kittens (who are now full on cats).  I may be sneaking him home in my suitcase.

With the temperatures creeping into the 90s we went in search of a place to cool off.  In the hills behind town there are a whole series of lakes, some small and ringed with reeds, others large and more rocky.  We followed the wooden signs towards Lago Tamango down a twisting dirt road past neat little farms tucked into the hills and sudden vistas of the mountain range.  It took us about 45 minutes to reach the lake, and another five for Mary to talk the owner of some cabins into letting us access the water on her property.  It was a world class spot with the whole Cerro Castillo range visible on the other side of the crystal clear water, and the swimming was phenomenal.  The horse flies can't get you when you're under water.

 Yesterday we planned to ride horses over to Mary and Cristian's farm down the road and help haul in all the hay that was baled the day before.  We got five minutes down the road and decided that it was just too dang hot for any of that silliness.  Instead, we watered down the horses and headed to the rodeo over in Ibanez.  It was so hot that all the ice cream in the ice cream truck was melting, and people were sitting underneath the bleachers to get out of the sun.  This was the traditional type of rodeo with bronco riders and live musicians singing of their exploits.  There were gauchos from Chile, Argentina, and even an incredibly tall gentleman from Brazil.  We watched the horses rear and buck, bodies hitting the dirt or clinging desperately, while eating sopapillas with chopped tomatoes and sipping fresh melon juice.  It's a fantastic way to spend a Sunday.