3 days in Chiloé

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Geo: -42.558, -73.9468

After a great lunch in Llanquihue, I took a minibus to Puerto Montt and there a bus (Cruz del Sur) to Ancud. My plan originally was to go to Castro and I bought a ticket there, but I had some time in Puerto Montt before my bus left and so I called the travel agency in Castro to see at what time leaves their tour to the Tantauco Park that I wanted to visit. Actually I saw on TV that there were lots of people in Castro this weekend and I was a bit afraid not to get a place in the tour or in a hostel. The hostel was no problem, they had free space, but the travel agency told me that all tours were full this weekend. I was shocked and a bit stressed out : what to do now?! So I called a travel agency in Ancud and they told me to call the 13 lunas hostel. Fortunately they had a free space and there would probably be a tour to the pinguin-parc. So I decided to get off in Ancud and spend one day there and then get to Castro in the evening. In the end my plans changed and I stayed 2 nights in this awesome hostel in Ancud and only 1 night in Castro.

Arriving in Ancud, the hostel was right in front of the bus terminal, which is great! I visited the city center (nothing much to see) and got something for dinner. That evening I met Liz from France (Paris area) and Laura from Amsterdam. They decided to do the pinguin-tour with me, which is great because this way to tour got much cheaper 25.000 $ instead of 60.000 $). I also met "my poor brazilian friend" Gleydson from Natal. "poor" is an insider joke : since I met him he didn't stop saying how poor he is (he's a teacher - lots of holidays but low salary) and since I offered him chocolates that night and pasta and wine the next day he calls me "mother theresa". He's funny, I like him. :-) We talked mostly about our travels, he showed me pictures of some places in Brazil and invited me to visit him in Natal and I explained him that Cabernet Sauvignon is not a brand but a kind of wine.

The next day Liz, Laure and I prepared to go on our tour but it was delayed to 12 PM. So we spent the morning relaxing and checking our further road. That's when I bought my flight tickets from Puerto Montt via Santiago to El Chalten, from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires and from Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo. It was quite expensive but the 3 tickets together were almost cheaper than each of them alone. I know, that's strange...

At 12 PM, Pancho came to pick us up and we picked up Cliff. I don't know where he's from but he has been living in southern Alaska for the last 6 years. Thanks to him the tour got even cheaper and only cost 20.000 $. We went to the beach from where we wanted to get to see the pinguins but the boat was full and so we would go there 1 hour later. In the meantime we went to see the places that he usually does after the pinguins : some remote roads that lead to a very nice mirador with a view over a wonderful bay. Afterwards we went back to the beach to take a 30 minutes boat-tour to el Monumento Natural Islotes de Punihuil, where we saw lots of pinguins (Magellanic and the nearly extinct Humboldt). We also saw lots of different kinds of birds and some sealions.
After this tour we had lunch in the restaurant at the beach (empanada de locos - a kind of mussel) where we exchanged about our different countries. Then we went back to our hostel stopping to watch different birds and to have crêpe from Paul. Paul is from the Bretagne in France and a very sweet guy. He bought his domaine 10 years ago and since 4 years he lives completely in Chiloé. A few weeks ago he started selling crêpes in the kiosk next door and everybody loves them. Liz and me talked a lot with him (in french) and he invited us to see his house and if we ever go back to Chiloé we have to visit him. :-)
Back then to the hostel stopping a few times for birdwatching and pictures and we even drove on the beach for some time. It was a great tour and in the end it was almost 6 hours and not 3 like planed. Pancho explained us a lot about the fauna and flora, the customs and the people of Chiloé ; he's a great guide and a very nice person.When we came back I went to the church-museum where I was so lucky as to get a guided tour (free) and they explained me everything about the architecture and materiel of the wooden churches in Chiloé and about their restauration. Those churches were built by people who usually build boats, so the roof looks on the inside like a boat. They didn't use any nails but different techniques to make the wood hold. They used lots of kinds of wood which explains the different colors of the churches. They used a lot of Alerce because this wood is waterproof and almost indistructible. There are 16 churches that are unesco patrimonial heritage, 72 applied for that status and in total there are more than 150 wooden churches ("iglesias del fine del mundo"😉. Castro has the biggest church and was intended to be a cathedral but the bishop never stayed there so that the small church in Ancud remained the cathedral. It was very interesting.
In the evening I had some beer, wine and pasta with Gleydson, Ian and Rachel whom I met that evening. He's from Jutah in the US and she's from Los Angeles in the US but her parents are Mexicain so that she speaks perfectly english and spanish. There were also Svenja from Berlin and her boyfriend who live in Munich. We had a great time together, drinking, eating Kata's strawberries (she's from the US as well and works in the hostel) and my chocolates. We had a big discussion about politics in the US and how messed up their system is and about Europe and the crisis with the refugees. It was a very nice evening and afterwards we went with Liz, Laura and Pancho for a few drinks and dancing to Retros, a bar around the corner. I wanted to go home early, but you know how this goes... In the end I left around 3... :-)
It was really sad to say "goodbye" to Liz that night. She and Laura were leaving the next morning early and we have become quite goods friends that day. But we'll keep in touch of course.The next day at 9 AM our tour to see some churches and the only waterfall in Chiloé started. Rachel came with me but I suppose in the beginning I was no good company ; I should have left the party earlier and drank less... ;-)
The tour was really good : we saw a few churches (Tenaùn, Quemchi, Dalcahue, Quicavi,...), learned a lot about the history and mythologie, fauna and flora of this island and we saw a beautiful waterfall. About the mythology : the epicenter of all stories about witches and warlocks in Chiloé is the small town of Quicavi where they supposedly have their caves. We also learned that the trauco (a hidious gnome that makes virgins fall in love with him and gets them pregnant) has an aweful background : the mapuche in Chiloé had (and on some islands still have) the custom that the father has the right to be the first man to have sex with his daughter and there existed (exists) lots on sexual abuse. When a woman gets pregnant this way, they say it was the trauco not to say who abused them. :-(
Chiloé has lots of mythology and ghost stories, it's quite interesting.
Another great thing about this trip was that our guide Pedro and our nice driver brought us for lunch to a small town where we had traditional curanto (you dig a hole in the earth, put steaming hot stones inside, different kinds of mussels, meat, potatoes and cover it for 1 hour with huge leaves and plastic to cook it). It was a fabulous day and I learned to love Rachel, she's an amazing person!
After our last stop in Dalcahue, they left me on the crossroad to Castro where I took a minibus to Castro. I went to get some information about tours to the private parc Tantauco or to "el muelle de las almas" (that was recommanded to me by 2 guys I met in la Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay). It was impossible to get a cheap tour though because apparently there were no tourists this week and if I wanted to do a tour it would have to be a private tour which costs around 60.000 - 100.000 $ and I didn't want to spent that much. What to do? I went to the "Hostel Cordillera" that I had booked and they had no less expensive tours to offer to me. In the end I decided to rent a car (the hostel-owner rents cars) and Rachel decided to join me. She would come to Castro in the morning.
That night was the best night of sleep I had had in a long time, I was sooo tired, I lay down and was sleeping almost before I could close my eyes... xDI spent the next morning waiting for Rachel and talking to my roommate from Australia who was going to do exactly the tour I had initially wanted to do : go to el Chalten via the carretera austral. He had encountered the same difficulties as me to get useful information about that way and he counts on doing it in 5 days (impossible to do it faster).
At 11:30 I went to the bus terminal to pick up Rachel but I couldn't find here. Instead I found Ian whom I had met in the previous hostel in Ancud. He wanted to go to Dalcahue but then spontanuously decided to join Rachel and me on our day-trip. Rachel arrived a bit later at the hostel. We got the car, a small KIA, and we started our tour. First we visited the church in Nercón, we a stop in a beautiful viewpoint and had some chocolate-biscuits and then we visited the church and city of Chonchi (very nice!). On the westcoast of Chiloé we had lunch in a nice restaurant in Cucao where we had fresh fish. There was a group of chilean people and one of them started talking to us and when we left he insisted on paying our meal, saying that we are in Chile/Chiloé where people are welcoming. Incredible, right!?! Afterwards we went to the "muelle de las almas" and very soon we discovered that the road was really bad : only stones, lots of steep ups and downs ; things that our little car didn't like at all...
We managed to get there anyway and like a miracle our car was still all right !
We had to hike the last 2 km and we run up and down the hills. Rachel told we that she does just as much sports as I do, ever more. We have the same opinion on lots of things, which makes it easy to talk to her about anything.
The sight we got there was just fabulous : steep cliffs, huge forests, blue ocean, clear sky. The "muelle de los almas" is a bridge on the hill pointing to the sea. It ends at some point and you have to go back because it's like unfinished but actually the mythology says that from this bridge the spirits of the dead sail into the afterlife/heaven. So, it wasn't built for humans but for the dead, for spirits leaving this world.After this we went back to our hostel. Last episode of that travel : I wanted to go from the hostel to the petrol station around the corner but the street is really steep and I couldn't get back and choked a border with the front of the car. I paniked and went back to the hostel to get the owner. Fortunately he told me that nothing bad had happened and he got me out of there and went to the petrol station with me.I got the last bus at 8:10 PM out of Chiloé to Puerto Montt and left with lots of nice memories and new friends. :-D

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Photos

Ancud
Main square

Ancud
View from my hostel

Ancud
Tour to the Monumento Natural Islotes de Punihuil

Monumento Natural Islotes de Punihuil

Monumento Natural Islotes de Punihuil
That's how you get into the boat... xD