A little town named Castro...

---

---

So, I apologize for the delay in writing over the last few weeks. I have been without internet for large periods of time and I feel every time I sit down to write in my blog, I end up trying to catch up on things and loose track of my time...so here it goes.

After we left the beautiful weekend in Pucon, we headed South on a bus to Puerto Varas. We had attempted to book a hostel in advance but in our haste, forgot to ask where the actual location of the hostel was...So, we realized pretty close to our late arrival in Puerto Varas that it was 40 KM from the town...no good. We were able to find a hostel in town thanks to the lonely planet, but only after figuring out the local city code, not thanks to the lonely planet. We found a dorm that had room for all 4 girls and we promptly set up shop and then went to sleep. The next day we roamed around Puerto Varas for a while, it was a cute town with lots of markets and a wonderful artisenal choclate shop..mmm. I bought some really warm fuzzy handmade slippers that have a line of salmon skin on the bottom, really the most unique thing I have bought yet on this trip.

That afternoon we took a bus direct to Castro on Chiloe Island. Chiloe is a small island, with many smaller islands off the western coast of Chile. In order to get there our bus actually drove onto a ferry before continuing on down the coast of the island. I would say it was almost as cool as when the train my mom and I were on drove onto a ferry to get to Copenhagen, but not quite as cool. After the ferry it was another couple of hours before reaching the capital town of Castro. We had booked a really cool hostel called Hostel Palifitos down on the water. Palifitos are the famous structures of the island which are on stilts out in the water, so that when the tide is up, the building is over the water. Quite frequently the tide goes out and its a drastic difference in the amount of water surrounding the island. It was raining pretty hard when we arrived, which stunned us a bit considering we had not seen rain in over a month, so we grabbed a cab and headed down the hill to check in.

Our hostel was absolutely fabulous and definitely made the trip worthwhile. The rain tended to come and go, very quickly, it was sunny, rainy and sunny, rainy, cloudy, quick weather changes. It hit me when we arrived in Castro that I did not feel very well at all. So I took it pretty easy over the next couple of days, to give my body a rest, but we did mange to do some nice outings. We took advantage of our one nice day to take the local bus down to see the famous wooden churches on the small islands off the coast. They were really interesting wooden churches, but honestly past that point there wasn't much to see. I did find it interesting that due to lack of tourist structure, some of the locals had literally pitched a table up in the squares near the churches to give info to the visitors. We did some shopping at some of the local artesenal markets where I bought an alpaca wool sweater that is very comfy and warm.

The last day, Molly and I stuck around Castro a little longer than Megan and Rita so we could meet up with some of the couchsurfers who were coming to town that we had met at the camping weekend. It was a nice reunion and we enjoyed seeing them before heading back to Puerto Varas for the evening. We made a reservation at one of the hostels we had found during our first trip, but it didn't take long to realize we were definitely the outsiders of the situation. The minute you walked into the hostel, we realized we were not hippie enough to belong there. The smell of the lounge area could get you high by itself and the group played music until about 2 am in the morning. We were definitely out of place haha.

The next day, with a little less sleep, we packed up and headed to Puerto Montt to check in for the Navimag ferry that we would call home for the next 4 days. After that, Megan accompanied me to the hospital so I could go get some antibiotics for my sinus infection/bronchitis. The hospital was a little worse for the wear, and they advised us to go to one of the nearby clinics which would be faster. The clinic was extremely nice, very efficient and the people took good care of me. I got all my meds and then we headed back to board the ferry for our adventure south.....

---

Photos

Castro Church
Inside the wooden church in Castro

Palifitos
Our Hostel is in there

Ferry Ride
Rita and I are on the ferry

Wooden Church
On a small island near Castro

High Tide
This is a view of the hostel palifito hostel with high tide