Northern Patagonia: La Isla de Chiloe and Puerto Montt

Chiloe Island was our next stop after the Lake District. It's very large and located right off the coast of Chile in Northern Patagonia. We flew into the city of Puerto Montt and drove to the small ferry to the island. You can take your car on the ferry and it takes half an hour.

During our three days on Chiloe we stayed in the northern city of Ancud at the Hostal Mundo Nuevo. This hostal has a lot of character. It is right on the waterfront, is very clean and tidy with wood floors throughout and a sun room off the front (which overlooks the bay), and has a laundry service (that we took advantage of). Below you can see that our room had a nautical theme with a boat-shaped bed. However, Ancud is not the best location if you want to travel around the island. If we returned, we would probably stay in the central city of Castro.

Possibly the best description of Chiloe is that it is dramatic and a little bit surreal, which Nikki really enjoyed. The weather on the island is unpredictable - there may be light rain, torrential storms, or beautiful clear skies - and that is just a description of several hours of our second day! A nice side effect of the weather patterns was a lot of rainbows - including a full double rainbow we saw! The island has many rolling hills and wild, lush greenery everywhere, as well as farmland with a lot of sheep. The wind can be wicked, giving us a taste of what was to come during our first day in the national park Torres del Paine (more to come on that).

Chiloe is Known for its Many Old Churches

The seafood we had on the island was amazing, especially for the price. A common traditional dish in Chiloe is curanto, which is a huge bowl filled with shellfish and topped with a piece of smoked pork, chicken, sausage, 2 large lumps of milcaos (potato bread), plus sometimes an actual potato, plus a broth or salsa liquid to dip your shellfish in (see photo below). It is SO good, and so filling! We had this for the first time when we stumbled upon what would be called a "clam bake" in the US. This was on the beach, and we paid $11 USD for two bowls of Curanto and a bottle of wine (this is a lot of food!). This was all while taking shelter from the most ferocious wind we have experienced while in Chile. At the "clam bake" Greg pointed to the food that we wanted. On our second day for lunch we ordered two curantos, not realising what they were! Although Greg polished off all the seafood and milcaos, we had some leftover meat that we fed to some stray dogs. That evening and the next, we ate at a restaurant called Kuranton. They have great seafood, and the price is very reasonable. Between the two nights we had:

• Carapacho (a dish consisting of crab and cheese, kind of like a really great tuna melt, but not a sandwich)
• Salmon stuffed with sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and cheese
• Shellfish including crab, all in mussel or clamshells, cooked in lemon, garlic, and wine
• Paila marina, a traditional fish stew

The paila marina was good, but all of the others were amazing! Greg is already missing eating the seafood in Chiloe.

Curanto

We drove around, exploring Chiloe, including taking a ferry to a nearby smaller island called Quinchao. We soaked in the beautiful country side, stopped along the ocean, and shopped for handicrafts. On Quinchao, we basically stepped back in time to a culture of farming and raising sheep and other animals. We got (too) close to pigs that had escaped from their pen (this seemed to be a common occurrence!).

Pigs Exploring a Ship on Quinchao

The next day we visited the Parque Nacional Chiloe. There we followed a trail that led us to the beach, right through a herd of grazing cows! Chilean national parks aren't managed as well as parks in the U.S. The entry fees are often just $2 USD per person, and there are not a lot of visitors to most parks. This park was the only one where we could drive a paved road almost all the way to the entrance. We got caught in the rain during our hike, but were prepared with our ponchos. It is always wonderful to be out in nature, although we didn't find our hike as exciting as our others in Chile.

After Chiloe, we drove back to Puerto Montt, driving past the city into the Parque Nacional Alerces. This was an amazing temperate rain forest, with dense vegetation, water running all around, and a muddy trail. A few parts of the trail were made of fallen trees that steps had been cut into. This was much preferable to the mud or worse: water with leeches. The hike featured a beautiful lagoon and old growth Alerce trees. An Alerce can live for more than three thousand years, making them the second-oldest tree, to the Bristlecone Pine, which can be seen in our home state of California. The trees were great, although we have now been spoiled by old-growth redwood forests in California that we find more majestic. The Alerce grove was small and surrounded by other vegetation, whereas we have seen huge redwood groves containing individual redwood trees multiple times larger than an Alerce, and the groves block out all direct sunlight, limiting other vegetation to just ferns.

We drove back to Puerto Mont and stayed at a nice aparthotel, awaiting our flight to Southern Patagonia the next day.