Bucket List – Go to San Fernando
I have a bucket list that I want to try and achieve by the end of my exchange, which you can see here. It’s been a long while since I’ve been able to write one of these posts due to the pandemic and lockdown, but now that things are opening up a little bit more, I can go out more and try to complete what I can of the list. So, without further ado…
San Fernando is a small town about an hour and a half south of Santiago, and honestly, I don’t have very much else to say as background about San Fernando because the town itself isn’t actually what I wanted to visit, but instead the people that live there. Many of my exchange friends have had to end their exchanges early and go home due to the pandemic, and there are not going to be any exchange students for the periods of 2020/21 or 2021 at all, and so it’s very hard to connect with the exchange community currently. Except, there is one other exchange student that has stayed in Chile with me for this year, and that is the lovely Juliette. And guess where Juliette lives in Chile? (Hint – it’s in the title of the blog post)
So, naturally, Juliette and I organised to meet up once some of the quarantine restrictions had been lifted, and that’s what we did. I travelled with her host family to their house in Chimbarongo, which is actually just a little further south than San Fernando, but still quite close. Juliette lives on a farm that mostly grows cherries, and it was such a lovely property, filled with orchards upon orchards. Juliette and I would wake up in the morning and go for long walks all around the farm, taking in the view of the mountains and the trees.
We also visited San Fernando centro, the centre of town, and while it was quite a small town, there was this beautiful park right in the centre of town that was filled with green trees that was really pretty and picturesque. We didn’t do very much except walk around the town, but I enjoyed seeing a new part of Chile and learning a little bit more about this beautiful country.
For the weekend, Juliette’s host family took Juliette and I with them to their holiday home in Pichilemu, a small beach town known for its wave and surf culture, and the self-proclaimed surf capital of the world.
We first visited Punta de Lobos, or Wolf Point translated, which is a well known lookout point that has amazing views over the ocean. Naturally, Juliette and I took many photos.
Similar to the beaches in Lican Ray (you can read about my trip there by clicking here) , the beaches in Pichilemu also have black sand, which is quite an odd things to see coming from Sydney. Juliette and I went to the beach to see the sunset the first night in Pichilemu, and it did not disappoint, it was so beautiful.
Juliette’s host parents also took us out to Cahuil, which is best known for its salt plains. It was really interesting to see how salt is harvested and collected organically, and it’s definitely not something that I ever would have thought about before going on the trip. Basically, Cahuil is located right on a point between a river and the ocean, at the point where the salt and freshwater mixes together. At this point, during the winter, the plains all flood. And as summer comes and it gets warmer, the plains start to dry, and so the water is evaporated but the salt stays.
We visited going into spring, so there’s still a long time until the salt is ready to be collected, but the picture shows what the salt plains look like at this stage of drying out.
Because Juliette and I are the last exchange students in Chile, we wanted to take photos together with our flags, which is quite a common exchange sort of rite of passage. So, to end this blog post, enjoy this photo:
