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Published: September 22nd 2011
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Back on the bus again for the trip down to Chiloe. We picked Cruz del Sur for the journey. As usual it was an overnight bus from Santiago. A bloke on the bus swapped seats with us – we had left it a bit late and ended up with seats all over the shop. Not he best for a night bus – you really want to be drooling on the shoulder of someone you know and trust at 3 in the a.m. He thought we were Germans again – not my fault, that's for sure, with my Norman red beard and curly hair and Asian eyes. It was Klaire's fault. Her blonde looks, compounded by her reply in Deutsch.
We slept, or tried to – by this time the night buses were truly becoming stale. We awoke just as the bus drove onto a ferry. For us it was a bit weird sitting in a bus going across the ocean. So I got out, leaving the bus, and braved the cold. Actually it wasn't so bad – the wind whipped around me like so much....wind, but I was comfortable enough in my Faux-didas jacket. But, simply beautiful. Dawn had just
broken – the grey light reflected gently off the waves of the inlet, broken by the passing of one or two tugs on their way to very important towing work. As I stood on the catwalk, just near the prow of the ferry, I could see across to the island. It was a fair way away, but in the clear dawn air you could just make out the buildings of the port on the other side of the inlet. The water was a smooth steely grey, and it looked cold. I'm pretty sure that in the depths of winter it looked much the same, plus a few random ice floes. Now, at the end of Autumn, it simply looked friggin cold – I did not envy the sea lions I spotted leaping about one bit, thick layers of sub-cutaneous fat notwithstanding.
Strange as it was on the ferry, we arrived at the other side dry and intact. We eventually arrived in Castro. The place had a very different feel from the rest of Latin America. If you've read 'World War Z' you can understand why the Chileans moved their capital here following the zombie apocalypse. Now to find a
place to sleep. We found one, easily enough, but we had to wake the lady to get into the joint. Tucked away a couple of streets off the main square, it was a cozy place, and cheap. Still, as the season was winding down she gave us a room with a view of the street and cable telly.
Directly across the street from our room was this strange house. Divided into two, with two front doors, it was like it was mirrored along its centreline.
In the left side was a dark haired old woman that peered out of the top window for hours on end. In the right, a gray haired old woman that did the same from her top window. Randomly, they would throw bits of stale bread to the stray dogs clustered below, then come out later and gesticulate at them with an old broom.
We never saw them at the same time though. They may have been the one person.
We were rudely awoken by, what I'm sure were, air-raid sirens at 8.30 a.m. It was still dark outside- I assume the sirens were to make folk get the hell up and
start their day despite the lack of sunrise. We didn't disobey – we got up. The ice on the windows from the night before obscured the view of the darkened street outside, but it melted as the day began. We followed an excellent included breakfast with a nice walk around this very pretty town. Definitely worth a stop here. There were, as always, lots of dogs.
It felt like I was walking through the community from that old Canadian show 'Beachcombers' from when I was a kid. It was all boats and logs and cold and blokes in woolen hats. Simply magnificent.
We happened across a museum. It was closed, unsurprisingly, but the outside was excellent. We weren't sure what the building was supposed to be, exactly...something. It was either a submarine, the front of a weird boat, or a giant poo. Really not sure.
The cable telly came in handy, for me, anyway. I watched Barca beat Real in the Champions League semi. There were a few blokes across the street clustered around a car. They appeared to be listening to a car radio, but I wasn't sure until Messi scored, and I saw them do a
few fist pumps and woohoos at the same time as me. Nice.
The main attraction of the town was the row of
palafitos – houses built with the fronts over water. From the street the houses look normal, level with the street, but take a drunken step too far out the back door and you're either swimming or up to your neck in sticky mud.
We had dinner at a
palafitos restaurant. It basically describes a house built over the ocean, and I wasn't entirely sure why they did it like that. Sure, the island was small, but not so small that you had to build out over the water. Still, being able to go fishing from your loungeroom is nothing to be sneezed at.
It was pretty cold and heading into low season, but that was a good thing. The weather was nice and there were no other tourists about. No sunscreen in the shops, either, but that was our problem, I guess.
Dinner was at a local place on the square. The most popular dish appeared to be a giant plate of chips with fried up slices of processed meat on the top. We
opted for something else – surely this close to the ocean you go for something from it. We had seafood - salmon and a really nice mussel soup. For next to nothing. You could get to like this joint.
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