It's cold in Valdivia. Cold cold cold. Well, not on an Icelandic scale, but on a Chilean scale. And I'm running away from winter, so I would appreciate nice weather, thank you. To give you an idea it's 18ºC cold, but of the damp shivering uncomfortable coldness variety, it's sleeping in serious-business jammies cold. Wearing sneakers and a long sleeved shirt during the day cold, or even *gasp!* a fleece sweater - as opposed to flip flops and skimpy tanktops. And since I don't carry pyjamas with me, there are more important things that take up the space in my bag, it means sleeping in my most seldomly-used clothes, which not necessarily happen to be the most comfortable ones. I do have a pair of wollen socks with me though, don't really know why I decided to take them along but I'm very glad I did (Annika, your grandma knits the best socks ever, thank you so much for that precious pair. They are second only to my grandma's socks, which are not of the cheery rainbow coloured sort but the icelandic practical type and too warm and space-consuming for a South America trip).
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I walked around town today, it's small and pleasant with lots of European styled houses and mansions, but few of them are old, most buildings got destroyed in a big earthquake in 1960. There was an influential immigration of Germans in Valdivia in the mid-nineteenth century and there are still lots of cafés in town that specialize in küchen and strudels.

The main market is at the riverfront, with the fishmarket closest to the water. It would be just another fishmarket if it weren't for the rolly sea lions that hang around and wait for handouts, not the least bit shy. The big lazy ones just lie there and sunbathe and grunt when the younger ones which are playing around in the water either come to close or get the best bites. The early bird and all that.

One of the uuu... interesting things I saw today was a billboard for the restaurant Parilla de Thor, which could be translated as Thor's steakhouse. The amusing thing is that Thor on the ad, tall and mighty as the image of Thor I'm used to, was dark skinned with a mustache and wearing a poncho. A bit like dyeing Pocahontas hair blond, cut it to a bob and dress her in jeans and a pink halterneck top. Hadn't I already been smiling then the image of mapuche Thor would certainly have done the job.