On the Sunday I made a decision to head to one of the places in a hostel guide I had picked up at some point when traveling with Mum and Dad.\u00a0 Originally I was going to head South to Pucon where there was an opportunity to stay on a ranch, do lots of riding and learn Spanish.\u00a0 However, I decided that Pucon was a little far to\u00a0go for the time I had prior to my flight and that heading that far South might make the temperature drop further than I wanted it to.<\/p>\n
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So, having decided on a place called, “Chez L\u00b4Habitant”, on Lago Colbun I called them up to reserve a room and check that they could collect me from the bus station prior to getting a bus down there.\u00a0 I\u00b4m not sure why I felt the need to explain that, perhaps as it\u00b4s quite unusual for me to display such forward planning I thought it was interesting or worthy of note.\u00a0 Although my planning was something of an exception the bus journey was not in that there was another moronic midget with uncontrollable legs sitting behind me.\u00a0 This one took the form of a small girl.\u00a0 Again the “responsible adult” with her proved to be anything but.\u00a0 I sat there wondering if, and when,\u00a0she would stop and also why guides to Spanish tell you how to say things like, “No I don\u00b4t want sugar”, rather than, “if you don\u00b4t stop that irritating little brat from kicking the crap out of my back I will”, and then promptly realised why they don\u00b4t!<\/p>\n
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After another irritating bus ride I finally arrived at the bus station in Linares.\u00a0 I tried to use several phones in the bus station which didn\u00b4t seem to like me, sat down and had a cigarette and then wandered about for a bit looking redundant.\u00a0 It obviously did the trick as someone asked if I was Zelma.\u00a0 It was the guy from the accommodation and we headed to his car.\u00a0 He turned out to be really friendly which was fortunate as the drive was around forty minutes or so.\u00a0 Once out of the town it was a gravel road and a little while along I screeched with glee and asked him to stop as a positively huge tarantula type spider ran across the road.\u00a0 He did stop but could we find it?\u00a0 I thought he may think that I had imagined the whole thing but apparently they\u00b4re very common in the area so he believed me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we got to “Chez L\u00b4Habitant” I instantly liked the place.\u00a0 It was a small family business with mother, father and son with a few rooms, a cabana and a bed and breakfast setup.\u00a0 Christian\u00b4s parents proved to be as we lcoming and friendly as he was and I had a view of the lake from my bedroom window.<\/p>\n
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After unpacking and getting settled for literally a few minutes there was a voice at the door saying that a, “beautiful lady” was wanted for\u00a0a video.\u00a0 My first thought was to give them some\u00a0comedy one-liner back like, “I think you\u00b4re at the wrong door mate”, but then I thought better of it as my comedy genius might get lost in translation.\u00a0 I was a bit confused and, having asked a couple of questions, rather unconvincingly agreed.\u00a0 With lots of questions running through my head I went and looked in the bathroom mirror to see what kind of state I was in.\u00a0 It was at this point that the same voice appeared and asked if I had a bikini!\u00a0 Actually I think the question involved, “two piece suit for hot tub”, or something rather than bikini.\u00a0 Now at this point I was seriously wondering what I had gotten myself into.\u00a0 After all I was very much in an isolated place, with no-one else staying there and a strange man asking me to put something on for a video in the hot tub!\u00a0 After a couple of questions which didn\u00b4t massively dispel my fears I willingly obliged and headed out in my bikini.\u00a0 When I got towards the hot tub I was pleased to see that both Christian and his mother were there, along with a professional and very non-dodgy looking couple of film guys.\u00a0 So there I was, sat in a hot tub, sipping Chilean wine, whilst Christian did pieces to camera about why you should visit Colbun lake.\u00a0 I did draw the line when asked to do my own piece to camera though it has to be said.\u00a0 So,\u00a0you never know, one day you might see a very confused looking Zelma in a camo bikini, in a hot tub in Chile drinking red wine.\u00a0 Or maybe not!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the hot tub, wine and welcome I headed to bed and had an early night.\u00a0 Actually it would have been much earlier if I hadn\u00b4t managed to get into the most ridiculous book.\u00a0 When my parents went back they left two books with me.\u00a0 This was partly so that I could exchange them at a book exchange but largely as they thought they were both crap and didn\u00b4t want to carry dead weight home and display it on their bookshelf.\u00a0 With this knowledge I still picked one of them up and managed to get drawn into it.\u00a0 I refuse to even mention the title as\u00a0I don\u00b4t want it promoted in any way.\u00a0 All I will say is that it was a predictable crime type thriller with dubious, unbelievable characters and an irritating principal protagonist.\u00a0 Wow, now\u00a0I know why I\u00b4ve\u00a0never been asked to write one of those snippets for the back of someone\u00b4s novel!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the Sunday I made a decision to head to one of the places in a hostel guide I had picked up at some point when traveling with Mum and Dad.\u00a0 Originally I was going to head South to Pucon where there was an opportunity to stay on a ranch, do lots of riding and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}