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Published: April 9th 2010
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After San Martin de los Andes we crossed the border into Chile, stayed briefly in Valdivia and then headed south to the island of Chiloe.
Valdivia is a nondescript town close to the Pacific coast. Its main claim to fame is the fact that it was close to the epicenter of the strongest earthquake ever recorded - the 9.5 magnitude 1960 earthquake which affected countries as far away as Japan and Australia. There are no traces of the earthquake today and the one that hit more recently in February was too far north to cause any damage. We stayed overnight to check out the river and its sights and rest before we caught a bus to Chiloe.
There is a small, quiet fish market in the morning frequented by both humans and sea lions, the latter coming to feast off the scraps thrown to them by the fishmongers. They lie in wait in the river, great, lazy blobs of fat with huge faces and long whiskers and enjoy the easy pickings from the market. When the market closes they swim a short distance to raised platforms in the river and sun themselves until sundown. It's possible to go right
up to them, there are no fences. However, the stench coming off of them and their rather aggressive behavior keeps people from approaching too slowly. The Native Americans who lived in Tierra del Fuego before being annihilated by the Europeans used to coat themselves in sea lion blubber, which must have given them a delicious odor. Still, it's better than freezing to death, I suppose. Today, free from the depredations of hunters and the need to search for food the sea lions lead quite easy lives. Sunning themselves seems to be their main occupation. Several of them wallow on each platform, moving only rarely. Sometimes one of them will raise its head and emit loud grunting noises or scratch delicately behind a jowl with its tailfin looking for all the world like an English gentleman trying to pick a burr from his coat. Their most physically demanding activity seems to be their main amusement - pushing their brethren off the platform and into the water, which they do enthusiastically, but really don't seem to take offense when their efforts are unsuccessful.
Chiloe has a mysterious reputation born perhaps of its extensive mythology and the fact that it is frequently
covered in mist. Although the prices were quite high the environment was almost Third World. There were rickety, smelly old buses that plied the narrow roads between small villages, villagers with scrunched up faces selling low quality wares on the streets and dilapidated houses with corrugated tin roofs. I missed the Argentinian food as the locals' idea of sophistication was fried Merluza fish.
But it is outside the towns that Chiloe shines. There one can still find patches of old, unspoilt forest and long, bleak beaches strewn with shells.
The fishing trade has recently suffered a serious blow when a virus introduced from Norway's fisheries had all but wiped out the local stock of Atlantic salmon. Nevertheless, there were whole neighborhoods springing up around the two main towns, Castro and Ancud. It was a mystery why there was so much immigration since fishing is the island's main industry and although every block of houses sported at least one pension or hostel it seemed tourism was as yet far from developed.
Inland the locals seemed happy to cut down the forests to make way for grazing cows but it is to be hoped that the National Park and the
quarter of the island that Chile's president bought would be protected from that fate.
Coming in to Castro we found out that the room in the hostel we were supposed to be staying in had a leaky ceiling so we stayed instead in the hostel's younger and more opulent brother which was a small hotel sitting on stilts in Castro's harbor. This was the best accommodation of our whole trip. The hotel was situated on the waterfront (such as it was, the water only came up at midnight's high tide) and was part of a row of stilt-houses which featured prominently on Chiloe's tourist brochures. There was no reason I could think of to have them, there was plenty of empty land on the island, but they were undeniably pretty painted as they were in coats of yellow, red, blue and green.
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