The day before we left Pucon Arthur developed ANOTHER flat tyre in the same one that had just been fixed days before! Luckily there was a vulcanisation shop at the end of the road so we popped in and got it repaired.

We intended to drive slowly (actually Arthur only does slowly) north to get to a town call Rancagua by Saturday to go on a tour to the nearby mining town of Sewell.

On the way we stopped at a train museum based around an old train yard. The buildings included a coal bunker, a machine shop and a very impressive circular locomotive store which stored 34 steam engines (14 remain). It has a giant turntable in the centre which gets the engines out onto the line or into their storage area. Unfortunately the building (reinforced concrete) was quite baby affected by an earthquake in 2010 and looked a bit ropey in places. Most of the engines were American or Japanese.

Outside the locomotive hall they had the Presidential train carriage and a very normal looking Presidential car that can run on rails when you remove its tyres. it is a shame that the country no longer has passenger rail and only has a little commercial rail still in use as the country is so long and thin they would only need 1 line running vertically through the country.

After another night in a petrol station (we are getting to be old hands at this) we met up with, by complete chance at another petrol station, the American couple we had first met in Chaiten and they told us about a German village they were going to visit, Villa Baviera. So we tagged along. It has a rather unusual history. In 1961 a German Paul Shafer bought some remote land and came over with about 250 other Germans (some sort of sect) and established a settlement, then called Colonia Dignidad ( Dignity Colony) It was all very strict and security was such that it was surrounded with fences, control towers, search lights and trip wires. It is believed Shafers security team were Nazi's and that Dr. Meingle came over from Argentina.

Shafer was chummy with the Chilean dictator Pinochet who sent Shafer his political prisoners and he would integrate and dispatch them. In return they got to live in peace and import whatever they wanted without paying taxes. There were also allegations of child abuse and other such stuff. Eventually in 1997 Shafer fled to Argentina following various charges. He was caught in 2005 and the colony investigated. Large staches of weapons were found, including a tank. 22 were arrested, some returned to Germany but 150 remained and rebuilt the community under Chilean control.

You can now visit but have to pay to get into the renamed village; Villa Baviera. We had a tour by a recent resident who was quite open about it all and showed us where Shafer lived and his bulletproof bedroom window, but not the underground tortue chamber designed with help from the CIA. The village now has a hotel (which Peter says has a 1970's 3 star Germanic feel to it) and holds Oktoberfests. We stayed the night by the hot tub with our American friends. We did find it all a bit creepy, but better a tourist resort than concentration camp. Apparently there is a film about to be released about the place called 'Colonia' starring Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame. For the full gruesome details refer to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/434 0591.stm

After another Copec camp (petrol station) night we arrived at Rancagua which is very short of hotels that don't charge by the hour! We had to pay out double what we usually pay for a decent hotel for a couple of nights so we could visit Sewell which is an uninhabited mining town on the slopes of the Andes at an altitude of between 2,000 and 2,250 metres.The town was founded in 1904 by the Braden copper company to extract copper from El Teniente (the largest underground copper mine in the world). For more information go to
http://www.infomine.com/publications/do cs/InternationalMining/IMOct2010a.pdf.

Originally male workers lived in shared housing called colectivos. Later family housing was added together with Playgrounds, plazas, shops, and a cinema. There were lots of staircases and unpaved horizontal streets but no cars as it is on a rather steep slope. It became known as the "city of stairs" with a large central staircase rising from the railway station from where the ore was taken down into Rancagua. A town of obviously very fit people!

At its peak, 15,000 inhabitants lived there. In 1945 a fire killed 355 workers through smoke inhalation. In addition the city was susceptible to earthquakes, avalanches and explosions. I bet life insurance was difficult to get! Around 1967 most people moved down to Racagua. In 1977 the city was emptied and demolition began but was halted in 1990 and the site declared a national monument.

The mine is still a major producer and is the deepest underground copper mine in the world and they plan to go deeper yet, but will be fully automated, controlled from a town many miles away. The copper is all processed in the mountains and is quite a site to see.