We chose the TurBus line only because there was no one selling tickets at our ususal favorite, Buses Jac. TurBus showed a directo to Temuco departing at 9:15 a.m., which seemed to me a better deal anyway than the Buses Jac that Richard had identified on line, leaving at 8:30 a.m. On entering that 9:15 TurBus Monday morning, I thought it seemed a more comfortable pair of seats than I remembered on Buses Jac last year. The snag came after the first hour onboard, when the bus veered off of Ruta 5 to head for Valdivia, instead of continuing directo for Temuco. Oh, well. An extra hour of viewing the lush green riverland around Valdivia ... an extra 20 minutes or so slogging thru the city traffic to get to and from the bus terminal in Valdivia. Pretty soon we were back on Ruta 5 rolling north.
Still, 6 hours in a bus is a long haul. My back was aching by the time we got off in Temuco, at the Rodoviario / terminal at the far end of the city. We took a few minutes before leaving the terminal to upgrade our tickets for the return trip so we could sit in those full-recliners in the front of the bus. A taxi to the rental car place, and it didn't take long before we were on our way, with Richard at the wheel of a little Chevrolet Spark from Avis. An hour and a half drive from Temuco is our favorite little Chilean town, the one founded by Italian colonists back in 1905: Capitan Pastene.
If you read about our visit there last February, you know we only went to eat. This time, since we had established a link to Patricio, the multi-lingual manager of L'Emiliano's restaurant and cabañas, we'd booked a single room for one night for CLP 45,000 ... about $84. What a spot! A huge and very comfortable bed, a bathroom tiled from floor to ceiling, just like in Italy, and a little sunporch with a table at which Señora Genny served the wine we'd chosen. We were a couple hours early for the 8 pm dinner, so had time to enjoy a walk around town before the wine.
One of L'Emiliano's buildings is under construction right now ... and it is amazing to see the way they are rebuilding a very old area along the street ... The original rafters and frames of alerce, the Chilean redwood, probably erected in the early 1910s are staying in place ... with some rearrangement of doors and windows, some additions of brick walls. The ancient roof tiles are stacked for reuse, and hoses for radiant heat cover the new concrete floor. Patricio says they want to open the restaurant with access from the street. Previously, you entered thru the driveway that circles a beautiful grape-arbor, pool, and grassy lawn, to get to the restaurant. Genny dusts the table on our sunporch with a few minor grumbles about the by-products of construction. Then she throws up her hands, "Labores, labores, labores, nunca finito!"
We feasted on prosciutto and pasta ... the pasta every bit as tender and cloud-like as I remembered. The photo inside the restaurant is just too blurry ... I'll get you a decent one next month when we return. As we got up to leave at 10 pm., the gang of 9 Italians who are staying tonight in the cabaña next to ours ... (They are making an Around The World Road Trip, according to the signage on their two vehicles.) ... came in for dinner. Patricio and Genny offered them full service, everybody laughing and telling tales as the food was ordered. We could barely roll ourselves across the little courtyard to our bed!
Look at this beautiful bathroom! We'll have to go back in winter sometime to really test those towel racks.
At breakfast, Richard questioned Patricio about property values in Capitan Pastene, and we heard that lots, depending on the size, ranged in price from 15.000,000 to 50.000,000 CLP (or US$25,000 to $83,333 ... using the current 600 pesos per US dollar).
L'Emiliano serves a fine breakfast, including scrambled eggs if you want them. But the workers were starting to hammer and bang in earnest by 10 a.m. so we got out of there. As we checked out, Patricio had just been talking with his mother, Genny, on the phone. He wanted us to know that they had a lot for sale, with a house on it, for 60.000,000 CLP (US $100,000). He told us where to find it, and we walked down that way to have a look. Nice little house. Big lot. Right on the main entrance into town, though, on a street much used by the logging trucks.
There are A LOT OF LOGGING TRUCKS rolling thru Capitan Pastene. We drove out of town on a road we'd never tried before, just to see where it would take us. Whew! UP into the forested hills with the working loggers. We passed cold decks every so often, where the logging operations stack their logs for transport; and all along the road huge trucks, heavily laden with logs, pine mostly, came toward us on their way down to the big highway. .
Back into town for lunch. We returned to MonteCorone, the establishment run by green-eyed Mabel, who remembered Richard from our last visit. He was dazzled by her new poster, and she promised that by the time we come back again in February, she'll have postcards and tee shirts available with this magnificent ad:
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| "The best legs are in Capitan Pastene and they are Montecorone's." |
Last year we told you about dining at Don Primo's, where the pasta was not quite as heavenly as at L'Emiliano. This year we tried the pasta at Mabel's place, Montecorone. Very good, flavorful, but I think I could tell the pasta had been made ahead of time and stored or frozen ... whereas the pasta at L'Emiliana always tastes like it was made just now for this particular dish. Below is Mabel's restaurant, but the hanging hams here are just for show. The light fixture is repurposed from the grain-milling enterprise that still operates next door. I'm afraid I couldn't make out just exactly how it worked before it was wired for lights.
We went back to Don Primo's to get photos of his warehouse, where the famous hams hang for months to cure.
The door to the ham gallery seems to be always open ... so the air can circulate well, I guess. We saw no other people here ... just those colonial manekins you see below.
Outside Don Primo's warehouse is this formidable old engine. There are birds in the wooden pens, turkeys and peahens. Later in the day two ancient hombres worked just beyond that pile of gravel on the left, mixing a batch of concrete for some project. We walked on up to the top of the street and turned to the left to find Anita Covilli's shop. She has her own special pasta restauarant, with a retail outlet across the street. We interrupted her pasta-making to buy a packet of HER prosciutto. (Wish I'd captured a photo of her with that bright white dab of flour on her nose.) We're already planning another trip to Capitan Pastene, towards the end of January, when our friend Teresita will come along with us. I predict a pasta taste test at Anita Covilli's at that time.
As we walked back to the car, Richard spotted this water sprinkler. A big plastic bottle repurposed as a sprinkler. What luck that the hose fitting matched the bottle opening! Ingenuity ... is it Italian, Chilean, or simply human?
Speaking of ingenuity, we had not come empty-handed to Capitan Pastene, this time. We'd brought this photo, from GUSTO at the Bellingham Farmer's Market, to share with Patricio at our favorite restuarant. Ah, cross-cultural interaction! The key to human progress.
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