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Views while driving the PanamericanaGreetings all,
Last weekend I took my first real trip in Chile. I met up with three other Fulbrighters and we headed to the island of Chiloé. Chiloé is the large island you can find off the coast, about 2/3 down the country. It is officially in Patagonia, so I have met my longstanding goal of getting to Patagonia. The island is steeped in its own folklore, including such myths as a beautiful woman who appears and dances on the beach; if she faces towards the sea when she finishes dancing, there will be a bountiful year, if she faces towards land, there will be famine. The most exciting of the various supernatural beings is Trauco, the most repulsive and powerful gnome to ever walk the land. With just a gaze, he can kill a man. He carries a stone hatchet and can fell any tree with three strokes. More importantly, he is so repulsive that any woman who stares at him will remain fixated, frozen, unable to do anything. Trauco takes advantage of this condition to work his will, which, of course, means that any single mother on the island was visited by Trauco (there's a practical use of
Scenery
Across the street from our cabaña mythology!).
The island is also home to amazing seafood. The famous dish is
curanto, a plate of seafood and meat, piled way too high for the two people who are ostensibly supposed to consume it. Included on the dish are a mountain of clams and mussels, along with sausages, chicken legs, bacon, and a type of potato pancakes. The whole delicious monstrosity costs around $7. Needless to say, I had it for both of my restaurant meals.
The other claim to fame on the island is the end of the Panamerican highway, which begins in Fairbanks, AK, covers 22,000 km and 12 countries, and ends... in Chiloé! I'm not sure of the rationale behind ending this monumental road on an island just a third of a country shy of the end of the world, but that's where it officially ends. So we rented a car and spent a day driving to the end of the road. As you can see in the pictures, it literally just ends, along with a satisfying monument.
We also went into 4-wheel drive and took our Suzuki over some rugged dirt roads (and across a small river!) to reach the
Mar Brava,
Proud travellers
(minus Meagan, our bold doctoral Alaskan leader and photographer) where you can hire a guide to take you out and try and see penguins. As we left the shelter of the cove, the waves of the Pacific got a little rough, and I really enjoyed my first time legitimately being at sea. Unfortunately, the penguins are only there from September to early March, but two Humboldt penguins were good South Americans (aka late) and were still hanging out on the rocks. We also saw sea lions, sea nutria, and several types of rare cormorants.
It is supposed to be raining on the island at pretty much all times of the year, but we were blessed with sunshine for the entire weekend. According to my travel companions, who live in the south, I didn't get an appropriate taste of the South for this reason. Nonetheless, the long weekend trip left me with many ambitions to head further south into Patagonia and enjoy more of the spectacular scenery.
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Antipasta
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Fancy meeting you here . . .
Hey, nice to have some company here on the ol´travelblog bandwagon to nerdtown . . .