Cosmic Chiloe

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Cosmic Chiloe!!!
Today I fell a little bit in love….with a secluded, untouched piece of Chiloe . I also learnt that passion is universal, you don’t have to be able to understand the language if someone has it you’ll see it.

More than 40 minor islands, the main island can only be reached by ferry from The Lake District. The whole Chiloe area is 180km long, but only 50km wide. Agriculture and fishing is the main activities here and people live simply, yet, very extravagantly off selfish and salmon. The island is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

After the drama (more Charle’s) than mine, which I’ll cover soon. I decided to still leave the dreary, dirty Peurto Montt behind, as per our plan and caught a bus to Ancud. The town is built against the ocean, but with rolling green hills dotted with intense yellow patches.

Probably the main attraction around here is seeing the penguins, of which you can observe 4 out of the 6 types in the world. So I booked a trip for this as soon as my bus stopped and had one cowboy of a taxi driver! He is only about 105 and actually clipped someone’s side mirror, almost hit a pig (YES) and spoke to me until my head spun! It didn’t matter one bit that I kept shaking my head saying “No Espanol”, he just kept talking! There is only one other person I know that can talk like that…

Puinguinland; a peace of heaven. After 25km of bad dirt road, you suddenly arrive at this stretch of beach, island patches and the never-ending Pacific. I kept thinking of the Halong Bay (Vietnam) pictures you always see and couldn’t help but wonder if could possibly be any more special. As the wave reach and retreat from the islands, you see penguins clampering out of the water and start their sauntering walk up the rocks.

I was unceremoniously thrown on the “Jefe Del Mara”, which there is no chance in hell is a registered operator, she looks pretty dingy. Juan Carlo, the unofficial tour guide/skipper, told me about Antartica, penguin species, the Pacific, the Atlantic, Chiloe and that penguins only mate once in their lives, with such passion that I felt ashamed of not being more informed! They took me (the only person on the ship) around all the islands and somehow, with sign language, English, Spanish and Afrikaans I had the best tour guide in Chile.

Juan Carlo kept saying “Chiloe is Cosmic”. I am in total agreement.
I just wish I had more time, because whatever it is that you are looking for, you’ll probably find it here somewhere.

Ps; The region is not listed on the list of regions on the blog!

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