Las Peñas, Chile (Week 2)

And we thought last week was tough.

Taking the reigns of a high end lodge didn't seem like an unreasonable request when Will suggested it. It seemed like an apt challenge. A step up from our mundane tasks and a chance to see if we had what it takes. We accepted - with a little viticultural and financial incentive - and stepped up to run the place for the week with an eternally growing list of jobs, errands, maintenance, guests and ultimately working hours. Six hour days were to be a thing of the past. No surprises there!

I spent most of my Monday dropping the family at Santiago airport. The two hour drive was nothing short of baffling beauty. Watching the sun rise over the Andes and punch through the lofty clouds with morning fog below is a scene I won't be forgetting anytime soon. (In fact, the end-of-the-week trip back was even more impressive; unlimited visibility with an afternoon sun turning the endless mountain range a light orange on a blue backdrop. Insane! Too bad I don't have photos as I was being a safe, responsible and efficient driver.) After a little detour (for lack of any maps - actually signage here is very good) I found the supermarket and spent a good few hours shopping for groceries for the week from Cat's neatly prepared list. A list for a menu that would be chopped and changed with every lacking ingredient. I only got laughed at twice by the same butcher for failing to identify meat cuts and then stumbling over the rest of the verbal exchange. You think I would have learnt Spanish by now.

I returned to panic in the kitchen. Our daily cooking requirements were lunch and dinner (Yanet took care of breakfast). Sounds easy enough, right? Well it does. But it's not, ask Cat. Dinner was starter, main and dessert, and lunch had to be packaged up for reheating the next day. It had to be ready within 10 minutes of the guests returning, a time which varied almost daily. We were in a kitchen we didn't know with an oven that fluctuates temperature more than a fever and a stove that only goes piping hot or even hotter. All our ingredients were labelled in Spanish or unlabelled, as were the cooking instructions and occasional cookbooks. We weren't allowed any repetition or leftovers and the food had to be good quality and well presented. The nearest supermarket was a half hour drive and the nearest fruit and veg was 20 minutes. Ah and just to top it off, the internet was too slow to load recipes. I think we found that stress we needed reminding of!

Threatening to buckle under pressure Cat pulled through and delivered some great dishes. Curries, beef bourginonne, roasts, stuffed chicken, pan fried fish, Moroccan stew, delicious soups, omelettes, prawns, and a variety of salads were all part of her menu, catering for anywhere between two to five guests. She came through on dessert too with sticky banana slice, chocolate brownie, lemon cake, pancakes and a ready made apple stroodle. Cheat. Although I'll be happy to take a small share of credit for a few of the aforementioned dishes. And the expert spooning of icecream - you don't need a summer job to learn that one!

But that was just the kitchen. With Yanet taking care of the bedrooms, washing and cleaning our daily responsibilities grew to include the following: cooking, setting the table, serving, washing up, keeping up to five log fires going (including stocking firewood, lighting fires and clearing ash), feeding the horses and dogs and walking the dogs, grocery shopping/stocks, day and evening lighting, heating and music, sweeping, raking and pruning, looking after the pool and spa (the spa pool took two days of blazing log fire to get from frozen solid to hot), teaching spanish (or drinking tea - the two are indistinguishable), as well as a myriad of other time consuming chores before we even got started on looking after ourselves and our cabin. And that was just the daily routine.

To make sure our backs and souls were well and truely broken, we had various projects around the lodge. I had the outdoors: doing firewood runs, clearing the horse paddock of rocks and weeds, piling up horse dung (to fertilise the vineyard), tidying up the barn, gardening and the like. Hard yakka as Dr Jenks would call it. Cat had the more mentally challenging job of computing. Perhaps more accurately, fixing the computer. In a freezing study she spent many hours waiting on the internet; syncing accounts, making mailing lists, designing email flyers (first wine being bottled shortly - exciting news!), insta and facebooks posts (#tumananlodge) and I suppose all other things computer that have become increasingly distant over the last few months.

You must know by now that I like a good whinge but to tell you the truth, I enjoyed co-managing the place for a week - only. We clocked in at 10am and out at 10pm almost everyday with a few short breaks. That's not fun or sustainable for any decent period of time, hence the 'only'. Learning, however is fun. And so are a pair of 50kg dogs who love attention. And an always-purring kitty. And free reign on Will's wine. And the company of a friendly Colombian. And making fire. Oh, and the fraction of pressure combined with the relief of relieving it (I'm talking about the kitchen of course). Those things are fun. And that's what we'll remember.

I'm glad Will gave us the opportunity to step up. I don't know how willing I would be to leave my life's work with a pair of randoms. I think he was grateful we saw that running a lodge isn't all wine and fly fishing and we were grateful for his gratitude (and a big old block of duty free lindt dark chocolate). I feel for them coming back from holiday and straight back into it - cooking dinner tonight and they won't be back until 6pm! We're now breaking the back of Chile with a 24 hour bus from Santiago (where we gave back the car to Will and family) to San Pedro de Atacama on the border with Bolivia. It's good to be back on the road and we've got an awesome itinerary lined up: Atacama, Salar de Uyuni, La Paz, lake Titicaca, Copacabana, Machu Piccu (pending), Amazon river (also pending), Lima and two weeks around Vancouver - can't wait! Flights booked to NZ on the 1st of August.

PS following the Louis Vuitton on live updates is excruciating. If anybody knows how I can get a live stream please, please, please let me know! Or my next post might just be from Bermuda!Read more