20th Nov 2016
For the last day of our road trip we are off to Putu and Constitucion on the coast to see the grey volcanic sand. We carve up the rest of last night’s roast chicken for a packed lunch and are on our way. The road climbs up the hillside with viewpoints over the vineyards and we stop to look. However the wooden construction, which we thought was a viewing platform has no way to climb up, so what is it for – no idea! The first planned stop is at a town called Lolol and the Santa Cruz winery, where there is a small private motor car museum (as well as wine).
As ever, when we arrive it looks shut but I finally establish with the guard on the gate that it is open and he moves the bollard to let us in. It is still early by Chilean standards – nearly 11am – and we are the only visitors inside. We mooch around the old cars from old Model T Fords and early fire engines to more modern beetles, an early Porsche and a Ferrari all from the 1970s, which we remember when they were new!
Their main claim to fame was the original De Lorean from Back to the Future. How many of those have we seen around the world? On the upper level was a collection of motorbikes from laid back Hell’s Angels easy riders to an old fashioned Wallace and Grommit (Royal Enfield) bike and side car. By the time we left quite a crowd had built enjoying the old airforce plane outside, so we had timed our visit just right.
Surprisingly, we gave the wine tasting a miss as we felt it too early or maybe we had not quite recovered from yesterday’s excesses. We drove around Lolol at least twice looking for coffee, without success (if only the Chileans took their coffee as seriously as their wine) and eventually found the road onwards to Hualane. We hoped to stop en-route at the river for lunch but again there was nowhere to stop at the side of the road or by the river, so we stop in the main plaza in town. We’re all alone as the locals are probably all home enjoying their Sunday lunches. All the local plazas seem the same with the same design fountain and busts of O’Higgins or Prat.
Putu is famed for its grey Volcanic Sand dunes, but the best way to see them is by off road buggy and our trusty little hire car is not up to that (we have already treated it to a few bumpy tracks and this would be a step too far!), so we contend ourselves with the wetlands and watching the birds.
If we had not visited Constitucion by car we could have come by train from Talca on the scenic track along the Maule Valley following the river, but there is not time to do everything. We were therefore pleased to see the train was in the station and went to investigate. It was twice the size of the train we took from Tacna to Arica, but just as antiquated.
Before dinner we take a drive to a view point overlooking the river mouth and can see as far inland as the bridge we crossed earlier to enter town. Quite a popular place with the locals too. It did seem an odd spot to have a church on the hilltop surrounded by benches. Just around the coast is a rock which looks like a church but we could not get a clear look from our viewpoint so we headed on around the coast for a better view.
From the cliff top, we couldn’t get the angle we wanted and so had to walk down on to the dark grey sand. We got distracted by a more interesting rock shaped like an arch but with the sun setting directly behind the rock the lighting was completely wrong. Even Lightroom struggled to make sense of our attempts to photograph it. Maybe we will have better luck tomorrow. You will have to wait and see!