Viaje a Temuco y Puerto Saavedra

So I recognize that this post is extremely late, but better late than never! About a month ago, we had our second weekend trip planned by CIEE. This time, we were off to Temuco in southern Chile. It is only about an hour flight from Santiago, but it is extremely different there than here. The focus of the trip was to learn about indigenous culture since the majority of indigenous people in Chile live in that area. On our first full day, we went to Feria Pinto which is an outdoor market that sells fruits, vegetables, giant cheeses, meat, seafood, spices, etc. As a group of 40 extranjeros, we definitely stood out there because Temuco is not a tourist destination. We spent the majority of the day at escuela Bicultural Mapuche San Juan De Makewe. Our day at the school was a combination of all my favorite things. We spent the day playing with the children that go to the school and painting the different buildings. We sang songs, played soccer, painted with them, and taught them how to play capture-the-flag. The students were so excited to have us there to play with them that they convinced their teachers to let them not have some of their classes. They all called us tía/tío which is basically a form of respect toward people older than them. I thought it is actually quite a good system since it would be impossible to remember all of our names.

We spent our sec

ond full day in Puerto Saavedra at comunidad Kom Che Ñi Ruka at Lago Budi. It is a community of Mapuche families that live on this huge piece of land that overlooks a lake. The views were stunning, but it was hard to imagine living so far from all civilization. We talked to the

different members of the community and they showed

us different aspects of their life: making wool clothing, raising animals, the farm, cooking, herbal medicine, and dance. They also taught us this game called palin which is really similar to field hockey. After they explained it to our whole group, they then said tha

t only men can play. It was pretty funny since my study abroad group has about 6 guys and 25 girls. We also learned some words in mapudungun, the Mapuche language (chai-el-tu-mai = thank you). They taught us all about Mapuche culture and how important the land is for them and the preservation of their culture. We thought it was funny that all the children were wearing clothes from the US (mostly with the names of sports teams)! That night we stayed in a hotel that was made up of individual cabins on the beach.

On Sunday we went back to Temuco to visit another market and to go on a hike. The hike was at cerro Ñielol which is literally impossible to say! At the top we could see all of Temuco. We then went to the airport and came back to Santiago.