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Published: June 16th 2017
Geo: -41.87, -73.83
If you could gather together all the people you've really enjoyed being with--ones that have made you smile or giggle out loud, or made you feel like a million bucks when all you had was $1.27, you might have a group like we fell into at 13 Lunas.
Not really impressed at first 'cause we had a basement room with NO window, I resolved to just not spend much time there and mingle with the 20-somethings instead.
How much fun was that? The first night they insisted, I mean ABSOLUTELY insisted we join them on the patio for this asado they had all chipped in to make. They're peeling carrots and chopping up raw chickens and telling us it's time to eat.
When?
Right now, they say.
But he just took the chicken out, I answer.
No, no. It's time for mariscos ahora. (shellfish)
So we go out back (there's no outside lighting--you just have to feel your way down a dark staircase and over to the fire) and there in the dark is a disc like bowl/flattened wok/dutch oven lid type apparatus on legs filled to the brim with clams, muscles and sausage merrily simmering away in wine, or beer, or who knows what. They've
got a nice cooking fire going, the beer's flowing and everybody's getting really happy.
And does it taste good! Bob didn't want to come out here--he said he felt so out of place with all these young kids, but I told him he had to at least come out and watch what was going on---I was afraid we'd offend them if we didn't. You see, they treat older people differently here than they do at home.
At home it's easy to feel obsolete when around a bunch of 25 year olds, but in South America they hang a different value on age. Or I should say age has some value and we've always been treated with the utmost respect in all our travels down here. We're often the oldest by 40 or 50 years but we've never been made to feel like we didn't belong. They're so amazed that Bob's still hosteling at 81!
Boy, my grandfather would never do this, they say. And Bob laughs.
And you know, we stayed at that hostel for 3 nights and really got to know some of those kids well and one of them confided in us today that they had all been talking about us
Penguins ---one's started loosing his feathers
They'll grow back in before they leave this mating spot.--saying how "cool" we are. We're the coolest abuelos they know, they say, because we joined them that first night at their asado. Even tho that went on until well after 4am and we'd gone to bed around midnight--didn't matter. We were now cool.
Bless their hearts they were fun. Next day a delightful Chilean couple joined us on the penguin tour led by Pancho and Claudio, owners of 13 Lunas, and another couple followed behind in their car so we could all go on the boat together.
We did about a 40 minute ride around two islands where penguins gather to reproduce--the fact that this is only place in the world where 2 different kinds of penguins mingle is a neat fact, but kind of gets lost as we try to distinguish between the two. Only 5 centimeters different in height, the Magellanics have two black stripes on the chest and neck while the Humboldts have only one. The juveniles are kind of a brownish grey color, not the jet black of the adults.
After the penguins Pancho took us back to town driving on the wet sand of the long curving beach around the bay.
Residents of the island of Chiloe
Flying penguin
These guys just shoot out of the water. have a national dish not unlike natives of the Hawaiian islands. It's called curanto and involves first digging a hole.
Then you make a fire in it and when everything's gone to bright red coals, in go the stones. When they've turned glowing red the coals are racked out and they pour in mountains of shellfish. That's covered now with the giant leaves of the nalca plant, a cousin to our rhubarb. In fact, earlier that day Caludio stopped the truck and got out to cut off the stem of the nalco so we could taste it. The stem looks like a giant celery stick and tastes both sour and sweet.
Anyway, back to curanto. On top of the leaves they then layered smoked pork, chicken, potatoes and then more leaves. On top is a layer of a dumpling type bread made of potatoes and flour. Then more leaves and a grass mat to seal in the steam.
It just sits there mingling it's flavors and gently smoking everything for about 45 minutes to an hour when the leaves are peeled back and dinner is served.
The clams are out of this world succulent--they taste like butter! And the meat is moist and tender
Kissy penguin
They're not really...the smaller one's a juvenile. Mama may be feeding it. like it's been in a slow cooker. The dumplings were not my favorite, but the rest was amazing.
Bob's not a shellfish man, but he liked the meat. Me? I could eat this once a week easy.
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Diane Trout
non-member comment
Great picture of the two of you!!!!