Gabriel M. Ortega Photography + Multimedia

In the Land of the Pehuen

Last week, I had the opportunity to get to know one of Chile’s most beautiful areas, the Region of Araucania, original home and last outpost of our indigenous Mapuche nation. Along with my girlfriend Claudia and business partner Evelyn, we journeyed for three days through the highlands of Araucania Andina, a verdant land of valleys nestled among active volcanoes and prehistoric Araucaria trees (also known as “monkey puzzle trees”).  These trees are known as “pehuen” (pronounced “peh-WEN”) in the native language of the Mapuche, and are living fossils from the age of the dinosaurs.  Our mission was to work on a series of travel articles about tourism to the area, with its colorful autumnal foliage in full glory.

UPDATE: One of the articles was published last Saturday in La Tercera, Chile’s most widely distributed newspaper.

contrasts, color, and Pehuenche cooking

The recurring theme of Araucania in autumn is the beautiful contrast of reds, yellows, and oranges with the evergreen colors of the Araucaria trees, the deep blue skies and cold snowy tops of the volcanoes.  Part of our tour took us through the budding touristic town of Curacautin, the jumping off point to head off to see the Tolhuaca, Lonquimay and Llaima volcanoes.  We headed to Malalcahuello, a town south of the national reserve of the same name, where we visited a beautiful waterfall that comes complete with a native Mapuche legend about a Romeo and Juliet-esque love sacrifice.

Our early morning hikes were graced by a crystalline frost on everything in sight, from the red and orange nothofagus tree leaves to the frozen tire tracks on the ground.  The golden light of the rising sun eventually melted it all away, giving way to the intense colors of autumn interspersed with the tall Araucaria trees.  These trees have bark that even looks like it belongs on a dinosaur, and give a certain Mesozoic look to the whole environment.  In fact, if you saw the film “Walking with Dinosaurs”, some of it was filmed in these very forests.  I fully expected a tyrannosaurus rex head to appear at any moment, bursting through the lush green canopy while we hiked among these majestic living fossil trees.

One morning, we decided to hike in the private reserve “Ruta de los Pehuenches” or Route of the Pehuenches (“Pehuen” = Araucaria and “che” = man), where various natives continue to occupy the land for summertime grazing of livestock and the traditional collecting of the piñon, a pine nut from the Araucaria trees.  The piñon is an interesting nut, with a distinct taste and a smooth texture that’s one of the prime ingredients in the Mapuche kitchen.  We were able to witness and taste first-hand the art of using the piñon to its culinary extreme with Anita Epulef, owner of Mapu Iyagl, a gourmet restaurant that serves amazing Mapuche food.  Anita explained to us that her kitchen only uses ingredients that are local and in-season, echoing the ecological local foods movement of more “developed” nations.  I was so impressed with the ability to turn piñones into flour and go on to make a huge variety of foods that I’ve vowed to buy myself an old-fashioned food grinder and try it at home.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at %I:%M %p. It is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.