CAHUIL, MATANZAS AND LA BOCA

Andres and I maintained our base at Pichilemu for the past couple of days, opting even to stay once again tonight and likely tomorrow as well after finally deciding to cut short the driving and concentrate on the goal of simply taking it easy for these last couple of days before a return to Santiago to prepare for my flight home.

CAHUIL:
But for the moment, let´s take a look at our most recent excursions.  On the day before yesterday we took a drive a short way south - to the coastal village of Cahuil, and inland to the Estuary Nilahue and the Laguna de Cahuil, where we saw salt evaporation ponds.  Many of the older ponds were either inactive or had been abandoned years ago and thus, had become prime wetlands where we were able to appreciate seeing a significant number of water fowl, like these Black Neck Swans  shown below:

Those two pictures were taken by Andres, as are all of today´s posted images.  Since he has become the semi-official photographer for this blog, at least for this current trip, he´s got me in way too many pictures. . .but sure, I agree with him that posting pictures of the blogger works to personalize the posts and connect with the reader.  So here I am, caught in the act of trying to photograph some of the water fowl in the estuary...

WEDNESDAY NIGHT PISCO SOUR LESSON:
Anyway, that evening, I had my own "pisco sour preparation lession," taught by Andres, and assisted by Guillermo, who works as the handyman here at the Hotel Asthur in Pichilemu.  This next picture shows Guillermo preparing the blender while I look on. . .

In the end, Andres and I had concocted enough pisco sour to put us both away for the night.  But before we consumed the product, we gave it a salute, photographed by Guillermo:

THURSDAY TRIP TO MATANZAS AND LA BOCA:
Yesterday Andres and I decided to drive about 90 km north of here to explore the coastal regions around the mouth of the Rio Rapel, which represents the  boundary between the Chilean V Region (de Valparaiso) and the VI Region (del Lib. Gral. Bernardo O´Higgins).  The views were supposed to be spectacular, and Andres had understood that there was good fossil hunting along the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

The drive took us somewhat inland, away from the coastal fog, and through some colorful pastoral country which included the towns of Las Damas, Litueche, Rapel, Navidad and finally, the small balneario of Las Matanzas, so named, I understand, because of an old slaughtering of sea lions which happend there centuries ago.  Here in this next picture, we get a view of a unique cultivated plant known as proteas, with distinctive red color.  I have no idea what it is cultivated for, but here´s the image:

Now the bush directly in front of the fence in the above picture happened to be a wild Chilean blackberry, and its berries were, for the most part, ripe enough to eat, so I sampled a few.  Fairly tasty berries, although a bit smaller than the similar sort of thing one finds along the roadsides in California and Oregon.

The next picture shows the view of the ocean from an overlook just a couple of kilometers from Matanzas:

We had lunch at a small cafe in the town of Navidad, and then continued on northward until we reached the town of La Boca, so-named because it faces the very impressive mouth of the Rio Rapel and its so-called Desembocadura del Rio.  Here´s several views, courtesy of Andres:

Here Andres captured me in the act of photographing the statue of San Pedro de Rapel, erected in 1942, overlooking the Desembocadura. . .

After absorbing the views over the mouth of the river, we traversed our way down through La Boca and onto the seashore.  There Andres had stumbled upon a real treasure trove of fossils and proto-fossils, so he dug out a good sampling of specimens.  And while he was doing that, I took the opportunity to get my feet wet in the waters of the Pacific... That´s me in the lower right hand corner.

More later, my friends.. By the way, remember that you can click on any one of these images to get a slightly larger version of that particular photo.