Pomaire

Last weekend, we went on a day trip to Pomaire with Karen's Chilean friend from 2011.  Located about an hour's drive southwest from Santiago, Pomaire is traditionally famous for its pottery.  Other than food and craftwork along a main downtown street, there's not much else to do so some other friends were surprised we happily filled a full day wandering around!  At one point, we tried to get to a pretty lookout point on top of a hill outside the city, but there was no real path.

Restaurants and homes throughout Chile tout Pomaire's wares.  It's usually unglazed, which leaves me to wonder how sanitary it is.  A friend of our who takes pottery classes back home told us that un-glazed pottery has lots of pores for bacteria and germs to hang out in.  Nobody in Chile seems too worried.  Our friend ordered coffee in a clay mug- after finishing the beverage we inspected the cup to confirm that it is in-fact stained with coffee from past pours.  Oh well.

Pomaire is also known for its pig imagery- there is an old story about a three-legged pig that was born here. At first people thought it was bad luck and wanted to kill it, but they let it live and the owners had good luck! So now the town is filled with clay pigs. Strangely though, we didn't see a single actual pig.

Fun fact, if you "google" the city Pomaire this photo appears first.  Only our most fervent fans will recognize this as Karen's very own photo from her 2011 blog post.  It's subsequently been uploaded to several tourism websites. Karen second-guessed whether or not it was actually her photo after seeing this, but then she found the original on her laptop!

Karen's now-famous photo of Pomaire from 2011

We were googling Pomaire to figure out transportation when Karen stumbled across the photo!  It was a funny experience to be trying to research something on the internet only to find information that you posted a few years back.  Originally, we had considered renting a car for the outing, but it turns out automatic transmission car rentals cost double that of manual ($30 vs $60 USD/day) since almost nobody in Chile drives automatic.  So, instead we took a bus from Santiago's main terminal, which turned out to work perfectly well.  It took quite a bit of internet research to locate the bus, so for those who are interested you can take Ruta Bus 78 to Melipilla which leaves every 10-20 minutes. Get off a little early at a stop along the highway, and walk around 15 minutes to reach Pomaire.

We quickly caught on to the fact that Pomaire is also pushing a new agenda to stay "relevant"- anything and everything here can now be found in a ridiculously large format.  

In the photo above, the 3 of us split a famous 1 kg Empanada (we had ours cut into there pieces, but see this image below for an uncut one).  These 1kg empanadas are advertised at every restaurant along the main strip.  I'm not sure why, but the waitress at our restaurant made sure to explain that their empanada was only 900 grams.  Does it actually weight 1kg but they say 900 grams to be safe?  Did the chef decide that the extra 100 grams would destroy the pastry's structural integrity?  We'll never know...  What we do know for sure, is this was one of the tastier empanadas we've had.  We were all struck by that fact that it wasn't *too* salty.  Kudos to Restaurante San Antonio for holding back the salt- this is the first time I've bought an empanada in Chile and didn't find it at least a little too salty for my liking.

1 kilogram Empanadas

Next up- a giant clay pig!  This novelty combines both of Pomaire's draws.  You have to pay 500 pesos (appox 80 cents) and walk 1/2 kilometer out of downtown to see this pig.  Matt was gung-ho about it so we came along.  It's advertised as "the largest clay pig in the world" and was featured on TV.  What left us a bit confused is it didn't quite sound like clay when we tapped it.  I have a feeling it's made out of a plastic or plaster mold and covered with a top layer of clay.

Giant parking!?