Hi mum! How are you?
I know it's been a long time... sorry about that! We were on a trip, a very nice trip! But you'll see photos of that later, now I want to show you a trip we made to the Andes mountain range and a small town called Lonquimay the other day
On the drive we stopped more than a few times to admire the beautiful landscapes by the road, so we took quite long to get to the mountain range But that's what trips are for, aren't they?
This bridge is very very old!
But don't worry, I didn't cross it! I'm standing here on a new bridge built next to the old one
I really liked these high mountains as a background!
Look mum! A suspension bridge! And I was brave enough to cross it!
It moved a lot and it was somewhat scary, but I'm sure it wasn't me the one who moved it the most! After all I'm quite fit and my weight isn't enough to move such a thing! I think it was Leslie who did little earthquakes in every step
This is beautiful waterfall is called "the falls of the princess" I think it's amazing how so much water falls and falls and doesn't run out!
I would like to swim here, but the water was really freezing!
...Another river... As you can see there are a lot of rivers coming from the mountain range to the ocean in this zone... a lot.
There were thousands of lupines by the road! Some were pink, purple, yellow and even blue!
Here we started going up the Andes mountain range! Even though it's spring, up here it still seemed like winter!
The view was amazing! And I should mention as well that it was rather freezing!
We kept going up and up until we found snow! Snow in spring! So we went to play!! But just for a short time... none of us wanted to catch a cold!
Everytime Leslie stopped to take pictures we would run back to the snow
Then we found what looked like a baby Araucaria and went running to climb it, but Leslie said that this one must be about 50 years old or more!
So I guess this one must be about a thousand years old!
After crossing a part of the mountain range we got to Lonquimay! There was nothing interesting as it a small town, but in the main square I found these two nice sculptures of Mapuche people
We were very close to the border with Argentina! These signs say Argentina to the left and Chile to the right! I would have liked to turn left and take a sneak peek in Argentina, but for that we would have to cross the entire Andes mountain range... so we just turned right and started returning home.
On the road back to Temuco we crossed the longest tunnel in South America! Túnel las Raices - The Roots Tunnel. It's 4,527 meters long! There was a moment when we could see nothing at all! The entrance had already dissapeared and we still couldn't see the end!
It was a fantastic day!
Hugs from the sunny Chile!
Mimi