Osorno

From the very beginning, one idea of the trip was finding the Latin roots of our relationship. Yet, as a big surprise, the trip to Osorno revealed the other part of our relationship, the German roots!

The entire region has excellent beer (Kunstmann, slogan: "das gute Bier", yes, in German!), small villages have churches that are exact copies of churches in the black forest or the local Spanish word for cake is "Kuchen" and the last 10 bishops of the region were all of German origin. Yet also from an indigenous point the region is very interesting: it is the land of the Mapuche Indians, the only indigenous people in all over Latin america that resisted the Spanish. cities like Osorno were founded in the 16th century by the Spanish,but where destroyed by the Mapuche and abandoned. Actually the Spanish evacuated the entire region and signed a treaty with the Mapuche that it would be their territory, while the Spanish would remain in the north. only 300 years later, Chile finally conquered the south and Germans and other European immigrants colonized the land and re-founded the cities that were abandoned 300 years before. The conflict between modern Chile and the Mapuche yet is ongoing.
in order to discover more of Chile, we made the quick decision to not take the bus but to rent a car and give us a week to advance to the north and go to santiago de chile, stopping wherever we would feel like doing so and visiting off the beaten path.Read more