Valdivia

Valdivia

A city in the south of Chile that has some wonderful rivers and scenery and is also know for its brewery Kunstmann and their seafood, as well as being an old German settlement. There still remains to be a large presence of Germany ancestry in the town.
Brian and I on our excursion, stayed for three days in Valdivia which is about 12 hours south of Santiago on a bus. We arrived in the city with little to no plans (something that we did for the entire trip, but it ended up being absolutely wonderful). Luckily we found a hostal right when we entered Valdivia. Actually, a better way to put that is that we were almost forced into the habitation by an supremely confident and bull-headed woman, who also owns the hostal.
The place was fine, and it was fairly inexpensive which was nice.

Things we did in Valdivia:
-Saw the Kunstmann Brewery
Realistically this is the only Chilean national beer that can pass as actual beer. This might be my beer snob from Portland coming out, but the in house brew coupled with the traditional German food made for a delectable little luncheon.
-Visited Parks in the south
Frankly not that impressive, it would be like waking through a park in the middle of Tacoma with a bunch of houses and what not all around.
-Visited Parks on the Isla Teja
Way cooler, this was also coupled with the viewing of a traditional Chilean rodeo which was pretty fun. Then there was also a festival in the park that was showing and selling the wares of the local inhabitants.
-Saw La Noche
This Chilean group, was playing a free concert in tandem with the crowning of the Miss Valdivia Celebration. The group themselves are decent, but are for some reason, ridiculously popular right now. It would be like seeing (insert famous trendy band/singer/group) live for free.

The time spent in Valdivia was very nice and relaxing, it was nice to be able to get out of Santiago for a while. Then after Valdivia we headed off to Villarrica.