Day 55 - 29 Jan.2012 - Talca

As we fell asleep yesterday quite early, we got up almost with the first sunrays and prepared the breakfast. We left Villarrica for San Javier, one of the wine towns according to our Rough Guide. Soon after Villarrica we got onto the motorway and travelled up north in no time. It was a pleasant change to be able to overtake lorries at leisure without peering out to see if somebody else was coming. We drove into the town of San Javier and what we saw was a boring little town with few people on the streets and all shops bordered up – it was Sunday, we totally forgot. But the town did not look like a lovely wine village at all. We had an image of European villages in our head with wineries offering their products or may be even a guestroom to stay. The man at the petrol station said that there was only one hotel in town to stay. We did not even bother to have a look at it and went back to the Ruta 5 and drove further north. This was definitely not touristic at all. As much as we don’t like the touristic towns, but nothing at all is as well not good. We drove up to Talca, a bigger town and found a nice hostal close to the centre. We went for a walk and learned that an earthquake heavily damaged this town on February 2010. It was still visible on many buildings but the people here got on with life and started to rebuild the city. Many new modern buildings are appearing throughout the town. The church next to the hostal, however, still needs a complete restoration. It is currently still bordered up – all a question of available funding.
But the town is indeed really historic. The Chilean “liberator” Bernardo O’Higgins passed his childhood in a house here in Talca, which is now a museum. It was here where O’Higgins signed Chiles declaration of independence in 1818 and where the Carrera brothers established the first Junta de Gobierno. Unfortunately the museum is closed on Mondays, so we could only take a picture from the outside of this important building.
We asked the porter at the hostal where we could sit, drink a nice local wine and nibble some food. He said on Sundays it is difficult to find an open restaurant and the best is to go to the supermarket around the corner, buy something there and sit on a bench in the hostal. So we did and we had our first local Chilean wine tasting on a bench in front of our room with bread and cheese.