Travelog for: GustavHH

Hello friends,

my name is GustavHH and I am just new in this thing. Yesterday I sat in my garden in Zingst, when I heard two guys talking in the next tree.



I called them and they came onto my tree.



They told me about their life - and it sounds exciting! Well - I want to try it, too. I had no time to ask RikeH - she seems to be the one who organize the travels. So I climbed into the car, when they left today.

In Sülfeld I walked through the garden - a nice sunny place.



I found the other ToyVoyagers inside - sitting on a big armchair. First I was a little shy.



But then I jumped to the others and talked about my plans.



I asked RikeH - and as you see - I am a ToyVoyager now.

Would you love to host me? I would love to see a lot of the world.

Love
GustavHH

Hello friends,

good news - I am invited. And I will travel to a country far away from my home - to Chile. Has anyone ever been there?

I said good-bye to Dicker Kumpel and Inuk.



Now I will jump into my envelope - and hopefully my journey will be a fast one.

Love
GustavHH

I finally arrived in Chile! The most southern country in the world!



As soon as I got out of the envelope, these two guys, Cassiopeia and Pepita came to welcome me They said I'm going to like Chile 
I gave Leslie the postcard I brought for her and she really liked it! 



Then I took a look around and these weird things on a shelf caught my attention inmediately. Leslie told me she bought them in Bolivia. The biggest monolith symbolizes the cosmos vision of the Tiwanaku culture. See mom? I'm already learning new stuff, feel proud of me! 




Oh, by the way, Cassiopeia is a yellow ToyVoyager which means "mission accomplished"!
I will do more updates soon 
Bye
GustavHH

The whole past week there was a storm but it's finally over today! So we got up early and took some photos of the view from the windows and some in the backyard, I met Leslie's dog, Licy but she wasn't in her best mood, so I better left her alone.

Happy Easter!!
Today we visited the catholic Schoenstatt Sanctuary. It is a very beautiful and quiet place surrounded by a small forest, it was really nice!



I saw monkey puzzles (araucarias), they are the national tree of Chile!










People come here to ask favors to Virgin Mary, and when they're granted, they nail wooden boards on the trees around, thanking her.










I signed the visitors book! I was the first visitor from Germany

We took a short walk around the centre and it was impressed to see that there was no one on the streets, but then I rememberes it was a holiday...
Autumn is here and the trees are losing their leaves, but the good thing is that this year La Niña Phenomenon is in Chile, so the weather is way nicer than any other normal year











And the last thing I saw was this poster of the movie ''03:34 Earthquake in Chile'' which is about the earthquake 8.8 on the Richter scale, in February 2010.
Leslie was in a city very near the epicenter when it happened, and she told me it was QUITE STRONG AND SCARY.    I hope it won't happen again, at least when I'm here! 

I was invited to spend the weekend in Valdivia, a lovely city southern than Temuco. It rains a lot there, but I was lucky, the sky was blue and the temperature, well, a little cold, but nice First we walked through the waterfront.



There was a submarine!!








On the way there was a market of sea food and veggies. I saw "chupones, chancle, castañas"... and some more weird stuff...






There was someone selling mapuche jewelry! They are made of silver, and are very expensive. The biggest one is the ''trapelakucha'', only mapuche women with high status in their community wear them.





Then we headed back to the watefront to take a tour through the river 



This restaurant is actually floating on the water!





Here we go!! 













We stopped at the ruins of an old house. The tour guide told us that it is said to be haunted 






...Haunted or not, the view was wonderful!




Then, when the sun was already down and the wind very cold, we headed to our last stop, an old church.




And at the end, what's best than a good dinner 

We decided to get away from the crowd of the city for a few days and come to relax to Queule! This is a fishing village where Leslie has a summer house, so we can stay as long as we want! Isn't that wonderful!   We had been trying to come since about a month ago, but the weather wouldn't allow it... But finally we are here! 

The view from the deck is very beautiful! 




A little later we started walking to "Agua de las niñas" beach. To get there you have to cross the hill or take a boat, but we wanted to walk and see the views from the path.






Mushrooms!  there are lots of them in this time of the year!




We also found copihues  they are very hard to find wild, because they only grow in deep forests and ravines, in fact, this one was hanging on the edge of a ravine, so it was quite hard to take this photo 



From up the hill we could see this other beach called "Ronca".



And finally we got to "Agua de las niñas" beach, its name means something like "water of girls" beacuse the sea has very little depth there, so there's no danger for little kids to swim.




After the long walk we enjoyed a nice beer 




Later, back home, I saw a huge quartz rock in the garden and some flowers. It was a very nice day! 

The weather hasn't been as nice as we thought it would be, and not as warm, either. 
As I told you, Queule is a fishing village, so the waterfront is filled with old wooden docks and fishing boats.






Just in case, it's always good to know what to do in case of a tsunami! 



Then we went to buy some mussels ("choros" in spanish)



I'm glad to see how fresh they are. The seller went to pick them up from the water!! This is so different to all I'm used to! 



I played around a little bit while he was there! 




Then, back home, the garden and its colorful flowers are always nice to see 
I learned that these red flowers are from a plant called "chilco"



And this big white one is called "hortencia"

Today we went to Ronca beach. Ronca means snore in spanish and the beach is called that way because of the loud sound of its big waves. It's forbidden to swim there because you would definitely die. 
The view from the hill when we were getting there was amazing! 






This seaweed is called "cochayuyo", it's eatable but stinks, so I didn't feel like trying it. 

Today was my last day in Queule, since we are going back to Temuco now.
The weather was nice so we took a walk next to the river.
This rock is called Lion Rock because it looks like one!! 






This is a view of Queule, it's a very small and quiet town, I liked it a lot!! 

I visited a shop of antiques and mapuche stuff







This is an indio pícaro, you can read more about it in wikipedia, because I don't feel like describing its use myself..






When we got out, there was a protest going on in the streets!!
and there you can see the mapuche flag as well (the one with blue, green and red)



And then we went to see what was left in another steet after a parade that took place there earlier. Sadly I missed it...
These coats of arms are made of flowers! 

This is the last picture of the three of us together.
I liked Chile a lot!
I'm already on my way home!
Bye bye!

I arrived in Belgium!
It's much colder here than it was in Chile, but luckily I didn't get wet in yesterday's storm.




Because I couldn't go out to explore today, I explored the house where I'll be staying. I also met some of the other inhabitants.



This is Indi, she was very happy to meet me. She's really sweet, but I didn't dare come too close yet because she looked like she wanted to lick me - I don't think I'm ready for that kind of relationship, haha! 



This here is Marcel, he's a little weird. I wanted to go say hi and become friends, but he wasn't very talkative. I tried to make friendly conversation and asked "what are you doing here?", but he didn't want to answer that question ... Odd. Maybe he's just a little shy ...?

(Can you understand the text? It's Dutch.) 



My host-mum is very busy right now, she has to study for exams. She told me I could help her with studying. I looked through her books but there were so many letters! Pff, I got a little tired from reading so much.

My host-mum says she's going to her university city Leuven on Friday, and she's going to take me with her so I can go explore.

Hi!
Here I am again!

Today my host-mum had to go to her university city to hand in a paper and to bring some books to the library, and she took me with her. She had to be very quick though since she's very busy right now, so she couldn't give me an elaborate tour of Leuven, but I still got to see some interesting places.



First we drove our bike to the village centre to catch a bus. This is the church, I was checking the time on the tower clock ... 10am, that means that we were in time for our bus, luckily!



Here I am on the bus. My host-mum says there's only one public bus company in the whole of Flanders, so all the buses look kinda the same. The interior is blue-greyish with yellow accents, so my colour went well with the colours of the bus!




When we got off the bus I saw the Saint-Peter's church. It's a gothic church that they started building in 1400, but they worked on it for many many years. I tought it looked kinda odd without a tower, but my host-mum explained that they originally wanted to build three huge towers (150 meters and 120 meters high) but that the plans weren't made well so the towers would collapse if they built them ...



This is the Main Market of Leuven. In Dutch it's called 'Grote markt' which means 'big market', but it isn't very big ... Maybe that's because Leuven isn't a big city either. The building behind me is the Town Hall. It looked very impressive, it has a lot of statues standing on it (236 to be precise).



We had to hurry on, luckily my host-mum knows a lot of shortcuts. Leuven is often called a 'student city' because of the prominence of the Catholic University of Leuven. The buildings of the university are spread everywhere throughout the center of the city, so if you know them, you can walk through them and use them as shortcuts to get from one place to another. This is the faculty building of the law students.



We made it to the building where my host-mum had to deliver her paper and the library books. My host-mum studies at the faculty of Arts, so the building is called the 'Arts House' and the garden where it's located is called the 'Arts garden'. Inside the building were a lot of students who were getting ready for oral exams.



After delivering the paper we went into a bookstore because my host-mum needed a book about Greek religion. She couldn't find it at first so I helped her look for it ...



Then it was time to return home so my host-mum could continue studying. We went to the train & bus station to take the bus. I would say I'd have liked to stay and look around some more, but as you can see the weather was turning really bad ... It started pouring not long after that, so I was happy to be dry at home.