farmhouse and lake
LAGO LLANQUIHUE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
My hosts have arranged for an elderly gentlemen to show me the countryside. He drives an equally elderly eight-seater minibus. We make a fine threesome, creaky but functional. I am in questioning mood. Agricultural land sells for 1,500,000 pesos a hectare - US$3000. Dairy farming is profitable on farms of a hundred hectares or more. US$20,000 builds a good house such as the Golden Boot. The monthly minimum wage is around US$240, a wage on which a Buddhist monk would starve. Chile's Government is Centre Left. Last week two Government Ministers were appointed to the Supreme Court. The Cardinal officiated at a family memorial mass for General Pinochet.
We drive through country that holds continual reminders of northern Europe: rolling hills, green paddocks, trees, dairy cattle, wooden barns and houses.
Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism in the 16th Century are known to historians as conversos. Lutheran conversos founded a tiny village midway down the lake between Puerto Octay and Frutillar. They built a small church on the landward side of the road. Austrian Catholics arrived some years later and built their church exactly opposite on the lake-side of the road. The churches are built of wood and are indistinguishable. We pass a small hillside cemetery shaded by fine trees. Snowdrops and daffodils have become naturalised and spread between the grave stones.
My family built the first Catholic church in England after the Persecution. The church is in the tiny village of Hanley Swan. Members of the Church of England immediately built a bigger church with a taller steeple. Their church is hideous. Ours is pretty. I shall be buried in the graveyard.
My hosts have arranged for an elderly gentlemen to show me the countryside. He drives an equally elderly eight-seater minibus. We make a fine threesome, creaky but functional. I am in questioning mood. Agricultural land sells for 1,500,000 pesos a hectare - US$3000. Dairy farming is profitable on farms of a hundred hectares or more. US$20,000 builds a good house such as the Golden Boot. The monthly minimum wage is around US$240, a wage on which a Buddhist monk would starve. Chile's Government is Centre Left. Last week two Government Ministers were appointed to the Supreme Court. The Cardinal officiated at a family memorial mass for General Pinochet.
We drive through country that holds continual reminders of northern Europe: rolling hills, green paddocks, trees, dairy cattle, wooden barns and houses.
Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism in the 16th Century are known to historians as conversos. Lutheran conversos founded a tiny village midway down the lake between Puerto Octay and Frutillar. They built a small church on the landward side of the road. Austrian Catholics arrived some years later and built their church exactly opposite on the lake-side of the road. The churches are built of wood and are indistinguishable. We pass a small hillside cemetery shaded by fine trees. Snowdrops and daffodils have become naturalised and spread between the grave stones.
My family built the first Catholic church in England after the Persecution. The church is in the tiny village of Hanley Swan. Members of the Church of England immediately built a bigger church with a taller steeple. Their church is hideous. Ours is pretty. I shall be buried in the graveyard.
