the Barge to Corral

On one of our first days in Valdivia, Dave surprised the kids with a barge ride across the river or estuary to the city of Corral.  The best part was the we were able to drive the car right up onto the barge.

The barge leaves about once an hour.  The trip takes about a half an hour.  If you were to attempt to get there by car alone, it would take almost an hour and a half.  It is much more fun to take the barge.

This is the view from the ships lavatory.

According to Wikipedia, Until highway bridges were built, Valdivia's economy and citizenry depended upon boat traffic on the surrounding rivers. Nowadays the rivers are used mainly by tourist boats and by commercial ships built or repaired in Asenav, one of Chile's most important shipyard companies. Fishing boats travel inland from the coast to sell fish at the Feria Fluvial market. Only one ferry operation remains significant, the Niebla-Corral line, as is it much shorter to reach Corral by ferry than following a circuitous road. Some of the locations that are regularly reached by tourist boats include Mancera Island and Punucapa.

Here is a view of the city of Corral as we reached our destination.

The Haviland car disembarquing the ferry.

Corral is a small but quaint city.  The boys really enjoyed this old fire struck in the heart of town.

While there, we stopped in to this convenience store for some lunch supplies.  Dave tried to sneek a picture of that cute lady in the store.  She must have been 4 foot 2.  We saw so many of these cute ladies while in Chile.  They always made us smile.

Here I am trying to order certain snacks from the shelf.  When you have trouble with the language, hand gestures and sign language always help. 

Later we drove for a while and found this nice spot neat the ocean to explore.  The cows thought it was a nice place too for grazing.

Dad is so good at finding cool things.

The little boys of course wanted to explore.

Dave continued to find great things and point them out to the boys.

We headed back to the car and noticed that we had parked by a whole bunch of murta berry bushes.  We of course had to take some time to pick.

Delicious free berries from nature.

We also found this nature preserve where we encountered Chile's national flower copihue.

It is such an elegant flower.

These purple berries are beautiful as well.

It has been such a blessing to be able to spend this time together as a family in the beautiful country of Chile.