Valdivia

Southern Chile in the Summer is so beautiful. We had a long drive south yesterday (Sunday the 25 of January) from the Colchagua Valley (near Santa Cruz, Chile) to Valdivia in the "River District." This is a "new" region in Chile that was carved out of the "Lake District." I guess they decided that this would be better marketing for the northern part of the old "Lake District."

We couldn't tell you but the scenery here is beautiful. Valdivia is a very old city, founded by, you guessed it, Pedro de Valdivia, in 1552. There are lots of old Spanish forts around the city and we drove to the coast today to visit one of them. In researching what to do, we discovered something else about this city. It was the site (or we should say the closest good size city) to the site of the largest earthquake ever recorded - a 9.5 in 1960. We are both glad we weren't there for that experience!

Tomorrow we head off to Puerto Varas, Chile and on Thursday we will hook up with our bicycle group for about 8 days of riding. Wahooo!