Chiloé

Time is getting a little tighter with final exams looming in the coming week, so the entry on Chile's southern island of Chiloé will be a direct transcription from my notebook.  A few things to know: Chiloé is at the top of Patagonia.  The largest island in Chile, it struck me as almost the polar opposite of San Pedro de Atacama- small, perpetually cloudy, drizzly, misty, with rolling hills and colorful houses.  The island is reached by ferry from mainland Chile.  One guidebook remarks that the currents in the surrounding waters are too strong to submerge electric lines in, so they're suspended from towers across the channel.  The isolation of the island is said to have fostered the strong mythologies present there.  A brotherhood of male witches, a ghost ship, goddesses and other creatures are omni-present in restaurant names and street kitsch stands.  Curanto, a hodge-podge of seafood, is the signature dish of the island.

11/22/08

9:00 a.m.

On the bus through Puerto Montt

5-year-old Amari asks the woman sitting next to me if I am her son, and she replies yes- my name is Filipe.  When the woman leaves, Amari's attention turns to me.  We don't get far before she realizes, with the help of her mother, that I speak "malo."  She gives me a kiss on the cheek, pulls off my glasses, hands them to me, then turns to her mother and says, "vamos!"  Gabriela may be right about Chilotes.  Gabriela's mantra for travel anywhere in Chile: "cuidado!"  She repeated it when I told her about my Chiloé trip plan, but then corrected herself.  "Actually," she added, "you don't have to worry too much in Chiloé.  The people there are very friendly."  We pass a storefront with a pile of anchor chain amassed in a corner.  The buildings are low, shallow-roofed, colorful.  The vegetation is dewy and lush, nurtured by the precipitous overcast.  Birds of prey cut wide aimless swaths from the sky.  Amari is back and tells me her (surprisingly anatomically correct) doll is named "Bebe."  79 kilometers to Ancud.

The coasts of Chiloé

10:30

Across the ferry, on the Island of Chiloé

Browns, greens, yellows meld together like a painters pallet, rich with the moist fog.  Dead trees bloom with moss and lichens.  The surf is a smokey dull green.

12:30

Ancud

Ancud smells like a spent shotgun shell.  This is the result of the widespread use of wood-burning stoves for heat.  A model with holes for cooking on top was for sale at the hardware store where I bought my poncho.  An unwelcoming, driving rain relented an hour after my arrival.  Misty's hostel recommendation and a very unfriendly tourist assistant have said there are no cars to be rented in the city, so I'm off to Castry where a brochure advertises a 2-door Chevrolet Corsa "Swing" for $20.000 a day.  If I can rent it with my debit card, I think I will.

Castro's "Palafitos", houses on stilts

3:10

Castro

The rental places are all closed today.  The tourist information kiosk in the plaza de armas is closed as well, despite their open sign.

3:45

Lunch at Mary's Restaurant.  No curanto, but the waitress suggests something which turns out to be a large wooden bowl of mussels and clams, with two baked potatoes and a longaniza and a bowl of cilantro soup.  Nothing remarkable.

5:15

Something about Castro's fiordo shores is beautifully depressing; enchanting and haunting.  The stasis of the anchored boats underneath the seemingly perpetual clouds is outdone only by the rotting hulls on the sand.  There is a glimmer of hope in the functional-looking boats dry-docked on stilts, but the purgatorial waiting emanates its own dismay.

The Karolina, in disuse

9:15

Ancud

Exchanged my Monday overnight ticket for Sunday.  If I'm lucky, I won't miss all of class.  The hostel has the same stove the one in Pucon had.

10:20

Restaurant Kuranton

I just spoke Spanish without needing to think about it.  Nothing impressive: "solo quiero curanto," I just want curanto.  I didn't need to work it out in my head before saying it to the waitress, who seemed a little put out that I was coming in so close to closing time.

10:55

Kuranton's curanto was outstanding.  Unlike Mary's, all of the mussels were open, but they also tasted much fresher.  I surprised myself by eating almost all of the food supplied: the imposingly large bowl of mussels and clams, the potato, the longaniza, the single beef rib, most of the chicken drumstick, all of the strange, boiled-dough seeming things, and the soup.  With the Royal Guard lager, it was the perfect end to a weary day.

11/23/08

11:30

Hostal Mundo Nuevo's breakfast of fresh baked wheat bred, apples, yogurt, fresh jam and a strange instant coffee-like beverage with a picture of stalks of wheat on the can was wonderful  Now tramping around Ancud in the sun and breeze.  Falcons hang on the ocean winds and swallows zip low to the ground.  The coast is high cliffs, and islands punctuate the horizon.

The cliffs of Ancud