The lost island of Chiloe
Friday, June 1st, 2007
Chiloe has a reputation for being similar to the west coast of Ireland, lush and green but ultimately rainy, and it certainly lived up to that when we were there. We only stayed two nights, and explored the city for the first day which was interesting as they have all these colorful houses on stilts which are practically falling into the water and the government can’t decide whether to condemn them or protect them as national heritage. The second day we ventured across the island to the national park, unfortunately under the curse that is off season there is only one bus a day which mean we would only have two hours to walk in the park, but after my previous trekking experiences I was happy enough with this as you can imagine. However, it was not to be. The hour bus ride ended up taking nearer three and a half when the bus couldn’t make it up a muddy hill and had to wait to be towed by a lorry full of rubble – I have had safer feeling moments. In total we had about 20 minutes in the park, enough to reach the signs which told us what we could have won! The journey back was equally exciting when we happened upon a little drama with a pick up truck a foot deep in mud which was being hauled out by a digger using what appeared to be a piece of dental floss. This unsurprisingly too several ropes and several hours, and we arrived back in Castro having seen nothing of natural beauty but having enriched our Spanish cursing vocabulary endlessly.
Chiloe is an interesting place though, full of legends and folk law about elves and monsters. It has a lovely feel about it too, a bit like it has been forgotten and therefore not really bothered to progress much in the last 50 years. It is a quiet fishing community essentially, where a good few people still travel by horse (well you can’t rely on the busses) and women carry baskets of berries on public transport. And it has the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen.
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