Chile Forum

Hi! I'm new here and a bit overwhelmed with so much info to process.

Thanks to other posts, we have decided against bringing our truck - so thanks for that huge savings! We found a private vehicle to rent from someone for two months.

Our 6 year old is going to be in kindergarten, so I am exploring options for homeschool/distance learning while we are on this trip.

Any advice is MUCH appreciated.

We are staying in Los Condes (at my mother in law's apartment) from end of November through New Year's Eve. I can walk to the market from her place and have a playground, pool and exercise room onsite.

I am going to have a teacher work with the boys a few afternoons a week in Spanish, and checking up on school work in English. We have a couple of family members who are teachers who will be on school holidays and charge us reasonable rates while we can help them and they can help us! The kids and I both need a lot of work with our Spanish.

I am looking for a tennis pro for me - anyone know a good, patient teacher who speaks English well? I'm just learning how to play and want to continue while there and definitely will need something to help keep my sanity and keep me active while in the city!

We will be taking day trips to the beach (thank God for friends with beach houses or lake houses!!!) We are bringing down some things they need or have put them up when they visit the US in exchange, so we have some great options of getting out of Santiago for a few times for a few days at a time. We'll be able to go to Vina, Concon and a lake. Any other suggestions for places I need to see/experience while in the Santiago area?

Second half of the trip will be in Villarica at my father in law's house. Very much looking forward to this part of the trip to show the kids the lake district! So in love with this region from what I've seen (limited!) a few years ago for only 8 days!

We will have clients come from the States at times to dirt bike with my husband so he will be working then. He might have to put together a tour or two for dual sports - anyone have advice on where to go and stay as they ride from point to point in the lake district? Thinking to start them in Pucon and go???

During the tours and classes, while he is working/away, I will be on my own without a car in Villarica. How hard/easy is it to navigate the bus in this area??? With little ones?!

AND a final question, I need to find a protestant church for us in Santiago and down south - my family there are not supportive or helpful in this regard. Suggestions? Looking online gets me pretty confused. Any personal recommendations or evaluations would be appreciated very much.

Well, now that I've brought you into my chaotic train of thought, welcome! Thanks in advance for any info or insight you can give.

Good news!

I found out there is a Jumbo and shopping center that is about 5 to 10 minutes walking distance from the apartment. I kind of remember this from our visit two years ago. There's a nail place there where my husband took me, set up the services, and left me there and he said yes to their upsell attempt to perm my eyelashes while I got a pedicure. I thought they were just tinting them and spent an hour in a burning eye panic trying to remain calm and use my limited language skills. It's one of my "must-learn-spanish-to-survive" stories. His good intentions, bad translating, and my failure to make sure I know what's going on all played in to make a funny story. In retrospect. Not at all funny at the time.

ANYWAY...

There is now a tennis club/courts right across the street from Jumbo! Yay for me! I have taken up tennis this past month as a way to get exercise and do something that isn't focused on work or the kids. Now, to find hitting partners and a good, english-speaking pro.

In Concon I took a surf lesson one time. Worst lesson ever and the guys spent a lot of time telling me what to do with my "ass". Not looking for that in a weekly setting!!! Though it did provide a lot of laughs when I told my husband's Chilean friends about it! "Your ass is big. You need to move it fast." I totally fell off the surf board laughing. We STILL joke about, "You need to move your ass fast. Is better."

Should I put up a classified looking for tennis partners in November? I'm a 3+ player now but working hard to improve before then!

Now my mission is to get my boy's curriculum sorted out and work with his school here to keep him progressing and learning while we are there. I am not a great teacher so homeschooling is going to be...interesting.

aspendirtbikes wrote:Hi! I'm new here and a bit overwhelmed with so much info to process.


Second half of the trip will be in Villarica at my father in law's house. Very much looking forward to this part of the trip to show the kids the lake district! So in love with this region from what I've seen (limited!) a few years ago for only 8 days!

We will have clients come from the States at times to dirt bike with my husband so he will be working then. He might have to put together a tour or two for dual sports - anyone have advice on where to go and stay as they ride from point to point in the lake district? Thinking to start them in Pucon and go???

During the tours and classes, while he is working/away, I will be on my own without a car in Villarica. How hard/easy is it to navigate the bus in this area??? With little ones?!

A lot of questions, but I will try to answer some with regards to Pucón and Villarrica. It would help to know where you are staying in Villarrica. I am hoping in one of the nicer condominios, as the rest of Villarrica can be a little sketchy. I would not recommend walking around downtown at night, as there has been quite an uptick in crime these days. No problem in the daytime, but nighttime, no. For most of the condominios you should be able to get a bus into town. Many children ride the buses all by themselves to get to school and back, so navigating buses with kiddos is no problem. If you are actually in town, then colectivos are an amazing form of transportation. And you wouldn't believe how many people they can cram into them, especially with kids!

The lake district *is* beautiful. However, I don't know if you have ridden a bike on the roads here that time of year, but if you are going to be here after the first of the year, I would beg you to not ride your bikes on the roads themselves. The traffic up and down the roads is crazy, and I just can't stress enough how maniacally and homicidally people drive on those roads. It is non-stop traffic from Temuco to Caburgua/Currarehue, and people are insanely aggressive. Last summer many more people were killed than usual in traffic-related deaths. The roads here are no place for bicycles, although people do it. Yes we have a ciclovia through part of town, but if you are talking about riding from town to town, please, just don't. If I misunderstood your post and you plan to drive from place to place and then ride your bike off road, then by all means enjoy it!

There is an aCuenta in Villarrica, which is kind of like the Sam's of Villarrica, but no membership required. It is owned by Walmart, and basically has some better prices on items, but buying in bulk isn't necessary. So I guess it's not really like Sam's .... We go into Villarrica once every couple of weeks to stock up on staple non-fresh items there at aCuenta. There are also several large meat markets (Carnes A Punto, and the one across the street from it), a great hardware store Agricola Villarrica (more expensive but worth it) as well as Sodimac, and a lot of produce stands. There will be many, many, many people in Villarrica that time of year. Be prepared. Do your shopping early in the day or in the middle afternoon.

Right now there is an insane amount of construction going on in Villarrica, which has been going on for many months. I would hope it would be done by January, but you never know. Right now the construction in many ways makes Villarrica almost impossible to navigate. It would suck even more to be on a bike.

I am not familiar with the churches in Villarrica. There are some protestant churches in Pucón. Again, would help to know which denomination you are looking for in particular. If you have any other specific questions, feel free to PM me.

Enjoy your trip. You are going to see two very different Chiles while you are here!

pl

Hello,

Regarding homeschooling... First of all, you are going to do just fine! You know your child better than anybody, so you will be THE perfect teacher.

I would say don't worry about a formal curriculum for your 6 year old, yet. Just read a lot of non-fiction books, and work on basic reading, writing and math. I have a lot of websites that I can suggest to help you with your home school, but I don't have rights to post links here. So, you can either PM me to get those or just google it . The internet is full of resources for homeschooling. You could also join your local home school support group in Colorado to get ideas on what they are using for school and see if there are any online schools there to enroll your child in and work with their curriculum while you are in Chile.

I have homeschooled my children for 6 years and plan to continue to do so when we are in Chile, so please, let me know how it goes for you.

Good Luck!

Picalena,

You are so lovely!

I am NOT going town to town by bicycle - sorry for the confusion in my post! Dirt bikes are motorcycles designed to ride off road. My husband has clients coming from the states to ride with him in the south. .

I thought I was going to die once on a car ride up Vulcan Villarica with our old man driving us like a maniac on a mission. I would be terrified on those roads on bicycles and ink I'd be put up for child endangerment for it!

We will stay just a few blocks from the center of downtown in VR. My in laws live by a hardware store but it's not the one you mentioned. They have a yard and I can walk down to the town. Its nothing fancy, really basic but comfortable and free and i feel welcomed there. It also forces me to speak Spanish as they dont speak English but they are down to earth and so enjoyable. My FIL owns Pollito Rico - a little fast food place off of the main street.

Thanks for the bus input - I want to be mobile with the kids during the days so we don't feel cooped up in someone else's house and so we can explore a bit. I forgot about the collectivos! Aaaahhhhhh!

Thanks for the heads up about the construction.

Errrrp yeah. Dirt bikes. Okay, sorry. I find that occasionally my English suffers after being here, so sometimes I forget how to say things or what things mean. I am constantly finding myself saying things like "disoccupied", "certificated", "plastificated" and so on as my English starts to sound like Spanish rather than the other way around. (I haven't yet started to say "defunctioned" for "died" but it is only a matter of time). So dirt bikes makes more sense and also sounds like fun! I was thinking of mountain bikes, and well, we do occasionally see some of those on the roads loaded down with a month's worth of gear, swerving to miss the ox poo and nearly being run over by a flete.

I love our Lake Villarrica, she is beautiful, as is the volcano. But I have to admit that Llanquihue is even more beautiful in my opinion. The lake is breathtaking, and my goodness, you can see three volcanoes all from one place on the shores of the lake. I will post some pics a little later from our visit there. Puerto Varas is a great town, and we stayed in an awesome little B&B called Casa Ko that was really awesome. It would be even better in summer when not so coldddddddd. Don't miss it, and please post photos of your adventures.

I realized my post may have been a little alarming as to crime in Villarrica. Our 12 year old son has run of Pucón in the non-summer season, but we have been repeatedly told that summer is completely different and not to let him out of our sight. Given some pretty uncharacteristic crimes that have taken place in this sleepy little town here lately (smash and grab of an ATM machine from the Copec, and I do mean the machine, as well as the gruesome kidnapping of a colectivero that was then thrown bound into the river, alive) I am a little more wary of those types of things. But it is so beautiful here, I know y'all are going to have a wonderful time.

I was also thinking about your homeschooling. We homeschooled for one year in the US when our son was in 1st grade. We used Sonlight and loved it, but it does have a religious component. Also, because it is humanities intensive, there are a LOT of books you would need to lug around. But you might look into getting the curriculum, and seeing if you can get the books in E-book form, and regardless, bring a Kindle. You won't find English language books here, and if you do, they will be expensive. We had a Kindle for our son until an unfortunate internet based incident (*ahem*), but I would totally say don't leave home without one if you are going to be homeschooling. So much better to have them reading from their own Kindle rather than losing your laptop for hours while they read an assignment.

Have fun! It sounds like a great adventure!

pl

Home'sCoolMom wrote:Hello,

Regarding homeschooling... First of all, you are going to do just fine! You know your child better than anybody, so you will be THE perfect teacher.

I would say don't worry about a formal curriculum for your 6 year old, yet. Just read a lot of non-fiction books, and work on basic reading, writing and math. I have a lot of websites that I can suggest to help you with your home school, but I don't have rights to post links here. So, you can either PM me to get those or just google it . The internet is full of resources for homeschooling. You could also join your local home school support group in Colorado to get ideas on what they are using for school and see if there are any online schools there to enroll your child in and work with their curriculum while you are in Chile.

I have homeschooled my children for 6 years and plan to continue to do so when we are in Chile, so please, let me know how it goes for you.

Good Luck!

Thank you so much for the encouragement! I need it - I will pm you for the websites!

I will check out local homeschool groups. We have a few online schools in Colorado but you do have to log on every weekday and I'm not sure that will be possible every day where we will be staying. Soooo, we will go our own! When he starts school here, I will try to work with his teacher for help - so far the admin is less than thrilled or supportive of our choice. But it's our life, not theirs.

My husband has found a teacher to help me once a week with his Spanish and to check our progress so that's a welcome relief. His sister is a special needs teacher too and has offered to help me as well so I'm starting to relax a bit and think we are going to be ok. That will also force me to improve my limited Spanish skills. With the homeschooling/teaching, it's not my strength and I find it challenges my patience and nurturing to the limits!

I have been collecting school supplies while they are on sale here right now and will start investigating curriculums as well. I am going to look at Picalena's suggestion of Sonlight! We are Christian so we are actually looking for something with that component as well. Thanks, picalena! It's transitioning from freaking me out to something I'm looking forward to!

Thank you, pl, I will check out that curriculum.

Looking at the photos of Llanquihue - shoooo, that is gorgeous! Absolutely stunning!

I am so looking forward to exploring the area - I will be sure to put that as a must-not-miss! We will need to getaway for a little family time so maybe this will be the spot!!! I am grateful to be able to stay with both sets of in-laws for extended time, but I also need my space at times as well! My husband is trying to decide where friends/clients are going to stay when here. One set are very high maintenance/high end and the other set(s) are really down to earth guys who will be on a budget. We are looking at renting a farm house from friends for them and keeping it simple and easy and the high rollers - well, we are still trying to figure that out. Any recommendations around Llanquihue for them? The hotel with the casino in Pucon - is that the most luxurious in town?

Frutillar looks cool!

Thanks for the recommendation on the Kindle. I have an ipad so was thinking that but I will need it for work as well and a Kindle or Nook might be a great option for the kiddo! Plus, will not stress me out over possible destruction as well.

As far as hotels in Pucón: First, the casino and the hotel are not actually physically connected, which is a bug or a feature depending on your perspective. The hotel is actually the Hotel Pucón, and it is nice. It is on the beach, and I like the finish out on the inside. Reminds me of an older grand hotel. I have no idea what the rooms are like, but I think people like it. The casino itself is a few blocks away; I have been to the bar/disco upstairs several times there - group karaoke is big, and by that I mean that the whole bar sings all the songs (I don't know any of them). I have only been into the casino once, when I thought that I could avoid the service fee for the ATM by using the one for my US bank, but alas I never could find that particular ATM in the casino. It looked nice. I am sure it is very crowded in summertime.

I have eaten at the Hotel Antumalal, which was a great meal. It is also on the water, and the views are spectacular. It looks lovely, but transportation from there without a car would be more difficult. There is also the Park Lake which is supposed to be nice, but to be honest it looks a little dumpy to me and would really be difficult transportation-wise. If you want to have them stay somewhere that is easy on transport, the Hotel Pucón is definitely it, because it is very central and walkable or very easy to get colectivo or taxi (there is a taxi stand right there). Regardless, start booking soon, because already the summer rentals are filling up here, and I suspect the hotel rooms are as well. I don't know what the rates will be like, but I am always flabbergasted at what people get for summer rents here, so I imagine hotels are the same.

As for Llanquihue for the high rollers, if you want in town, I think someone on the forum said the casino in Puerto Varas is nice, but I am not sure that person or their posts are still around. Maybe someone else can make a recommendation. Years ago we fell in love with the south of Chile in Frutillar at a place called Los Volcanes. Maybe Admin can chime in and tell us whether that is still a good place. We liked being on the pension, so we had sit-down dinner in the restaurant every night, which was nice. We had never even known the south of Chile existed but drove from Valpo to Chiloe to just to see the penguins, and pretty much stumbled into Frutillar to stay a night. There is (or at least was) a billboard as you drive into town that has the lake with the volcano rising up above it, flowers, etc. Beautiful, but I presumed that view didn't really exist. We rolled into Los Volcanes and were being shown the rooms. I asked if there was a view from the hotel room, and she drew back the curtains. It was EXACTLY like the billboard, but for real. We ended up staying three nights. The second night I was awoken by the haunting sounds of hundreds of bandurrias coming in at about 3 am to roost. I had NEVER heard anything like that before. It was amazing, and creepy, all at the same time. To this day, I don't feel like I am in the south of Chile until I hear the bandurrias honking at me from above. My parents also stayed at a great place actually in Frutillar that was a B&B right in town, but I can't recall the name. I will check with them and let you know. They loved it, and they are pretty much comfort seeking creatures. Again, I am sure Admin can point you to the best in Frutillar. My folks also loved Yan Kee Way in PV, but I think someone said a little while back that they may have closed down.

pl

https://www.facebook.com/groups/43821715019/ is an excellent resource for all things Santiago related.
I recommend you join and ask questions there too.

and, Welcome

Thank you, work in progress! Love that name.

I did join that group on Facebook and will definitely ask there - didn't think of it!

We have decided to keep the guys based around Pucon because the hubs knows that area well enough and won't be leaving me and the kiddos for weeks at a time with the in laws and no transport. And we are hiring a local guide to work with us there as well. And so I am totally out of the loop on where they go, I just have to make the lodging decision for the very rich guys. The other groups, we are definitely taking care of ourselves by using/renting a house from a friend and having a local woman come in to clean and cook for them. My husband's step mom's family all lives in Villarica and that area so we can likely hire one of them to do it. They are not so helpful on lodging advice - cannot understand when money is no object and what these guys are used to and what they will want. Love that sweetness and hope they never get defiled!!! Sometimes, I think I'm jaded by working with some of our clients and their lifestyle of waste and excess. But, when it benefits my own family and business, I approve. I get the hypocrisy.

So now, I'll see what the moms on facebook have to say!

Thank you so much for the encouragement! I need it - I will pm you for the websites!

You are welcome!

I, too, am collecting materials and books to take to Chile to continue our home school. It is my understanding that it's hard or expensive to buy reading books in Chile. So, if your children like to read, take a lot of books with you.

I hope you find the best fit for your family.