February 19 - Around Pucon

A quiet day today, as we decided not to overdo it after yesterday's hike.  We found a small museum that had an amazing exhibit of Mapucho artifacts.  Lots of pictures for you.

The case is full of ceremonial axes.

Necklaces

Musical instruments - pipes.  I don't know what the stone is, but I imagine it took a while to drill it.











More necklaces

Earrings.  I don't know if they pierced their ears or if these just hung on ear lobes.  Pretty thick 'wires' for pierced ears.


That's it for the museum.  We wandered about town, but never made it to the tourist beach.  Not that we missed anything.

The curator of the museum explained that the Mapucho calendar had 13 months of 28 days.  That's 364 days.  Apparently, they understood about the other quarter day, so every 4 years they threw in a "party day" (at least that's how I think he explained it.




We wandered to the east side of town.  The local cemetery is built on the hillside with this wooden statue of Christ overlooking it.

 A view of downtown Pucon.  Downtown is small and compact.

A picture to the right of the previous one.  You can see the cemetery, the monastery above and the tremendous backdrop of the mountains behind.  You can't tell it from the photo, but a lot of the far hillside is planted forest.

We had a late lunch and a calory bomb dessert this evening.  Most of the restaurants are pushing "Jugo Naturale" or fresh squeezed juices.  We had pineapple and strawberry today.  They are great.

That's it for today.  Tomorrow will be an early get up as we are hiking again.  This one will be tougher than the last as it is mainly uphill, but we should get views of 3 or 4 volcanoes.