Chiloé

What do college students on foreign exchange do with a week off of school? Travel, claro!

Thus, Mollie, Eric, Emily and I all went south to the border of Patagonia for a week, to the archipelago of Chiloé, to be exact (this is the first time in my life that archipelago isn’t just a setting on Age of Empires). Here’s the breakdown of our journey.

Sunday evening we climbed into a massive double-decker bus and took up our seats right in front, staring down at the pedestrians and teeny cars it looked like the driver was about to squish at every corner. We munched on oatmeal –chocolate cookies that Mollie made, carrots, bananas, and a few sandwiches, and when we awoke at 5 am to start dropping people off we dug into our provisions of chocolate milk and more cookies. We enjoyed 3 movies with Spanish subtitles and faint English, yay for Tom Cruise and sci-fi. Overall, the 16 hour trip was actually more enjoyable than a plane flight, mostly because the seats were better.

Monday morning we shook out the kinks in our legs and decided we loved buses so much that we would take a bus tour of the lake region surrounding Puerto Montt (which is still on the mainland). We girls piled into the very back seat of a 15 passenger van with our backpacks atop of us and stared out the windows at the town, the lakes, and finally the volcano. Our first stop was lago Llanquihue, near Puerto Varas. Across the blue water we could see the peak of Volcan Osorno and some other white-capped mountains. After living in urban, bustling, crowded Valpo and Viña, it was especially breathtaking. It felt like Alaska. Next we stopped to take a boat ride. We saw a little island upon which there used to be a café, until an earthquake took it out. I felt like we were in the Amazon or an 18^th century painting of the wilds.

Arguably the best stop, Saltas de Petrohue, reminded me a lot of Hatcher Pass with a higher concentration of waterfalls. The water was a fantastic turquoise, and the waters roared over rocks in great torrents. Our cameras simply weren’t effective. Our final wow moment was getting up the volcano itself – the van ground its way back and forth over the switchbacks and we stared down at lake Llanquihue. At the top, we checked out the ski lodge as well as the skiers who were enjoying the last of the year’s snow. We gathered some igneous rocks, and basically marveled. I stupidly put some of the rocks in my pocket with my other belongings, so now my camera and phone have ancient lava scars. It sounds better that way. The bus driver had promised to get us back by our next bus at 7:30 to Ancud, and he was good to his word – with 6 minutes to spare. His driving was impressively aggressive in rush-hour Puerto Montt, and we dashed into our bus with only minimal regrets that there would be no dinner. We took our first ferry in the night, watching the lights hit the water as we crossed to Chiloe.

When we arrived in Ancud, around 10 pm we discovered that there were 2 bus stations in town…so the description of our hostel ‘as right across from the bus station’ still meant that it was on the other side of town for us. We asked around and got the general direction. After 8 or so blocks, we stopped in at Willy’s Botilleria to find out where to go next. Willy turned out to have trusty friends, who told us just where to go. We ended the day in the nicest hostel I have ever stayed at (as well as one of the cheapest), snuggled under velvety blankets and luxuriated in the central heating system. As the member responsible for hostel-booking, I was relieved and content.

Day 2 we woke up to rain. After bumming about a little in the town, we came to the conclusion that it was clearly off-season for tourists and that we should probably continue south to Castro. Plus, the bus offered a roof. In Castro we spent the day exploring – a couple markets, a cemetery, and houses on stilts (palafitos) filled the day. We also stayed in a palafito, which was pretty neat. For dinner we made avocado/cheese/turkey sandwiches and tomato soup. Emily’s mom had insisted on giving her condensed milk to take with her- we conjured up an image of her starving to death in the mountains of the south and drinking her condensed milk, thus saving her life. Condensed milk is quite a treat here, actually, people use it in coffee or on fruit for dessert. We poured it over canned peaches and added the crumbly remnants of Mollie’s cookies for dessert while we played cards.

Wednesday was the 18^th, Fiesta Patria. We took a bus to Chiloe National Park in the morning, putsying along through rolling hills dotted with cattle and sheep. It felt a bit like a James Herriot book. At the park we walked through the wet forest, admiring unusual trees and listening to a few birdcalls. One trail took us to the beach, where we saw cattle and horses grazing next to the ocean. It felt like Misty of Chincoteague. We ate some more sandwiches and carrots, one of which broke Eric’s retainer. Darn rabbit food. When we returned we checked into a B and B and met up with a French friend for the night’s festivities. We went to a fonda, or a general fiesta, that she had heard about. It was full of families, which was nice. We ate piles of little fried empanadas, and I got a chance to try vaina, a cocktail of sherry, wine, egg yolks, pisco, and cinnamon. I quite enjoyed it, and despite the band blasting deafening music, we all had a pretty good time. Mollie even danced the Cueca with a Chileno.

Thursday we met Lucille again to hit up Delcahue and then Ancao, a village with the oldest Jesuit church on Chiloe.  Well, on an island next to Chiloe (insert another ferry ride). Unfortunately the churches we visited were closed, but at least we sat on the porch companionably while waiting for rain showers to cease. We also found the only restaurant open in Ancao for lunch. We may not have been impressed by their hot chocolate (powder in water…) or their food, but we did enjoy their wood stove. Afterwards the sun came out, so we sat on the beach and watched kids flying kites (a typical thing for the 18^th) and even saw a few dolphins. Then, once again, we hit the buses to get back to Puerto Montt for our last night in a hostel (but not before I’d shared a couple James Herriot stories with the group. Mollie read some in a British accent…quite fun) It turned out to be our most eventful hostel as well. The bus was late, so we arrived around 10 pm, and our little map we had sketched from google maps proved quite inadequate in the windy, uphill route from the station towards what we hoped was our destination. We ended up taking a colectivo after trudging uphill for a while, and when the collectivo dropped us off at the first address we had written down, we paused again – it looked like a home. No signs, no bell, no light outside. We eyeballed the other address a few streets over, and after ringing the bell from an equally dubious building got no response. So we returned to the first, Mollie got the gate open, and we bravely knocked on the door. The guy who answered told us that our hostel was, in fact, in that very same building. An old lady arrived and showed us to a couple rooms in the enormous, rambling house partially filled by her family. Tired and hungry, we polished off our carrots, oranges, a cheese sandwich, and a bit of chocolate amid many delirous giggles and hit the sack.

    

Friday we enjoyed a home-style breakfast prepared on a wood stove, complete with flirtings with the grandbaby of the house. He kept asking grandma for cookies, and so she told him he was going to go home with me to the US. She asked me what my family would say if I arrived with such a baby. I told her my family would ask where the beloved Chileno was. She laughed. I was so happy to have made a joke in Spanish. The rest of the day we spent dedicated to food and friendship. We strolled along the coast, up to the mall, which was conveniently heated and with a roof. We walked by all the clothing stores, but descended upon a book shop. There’s not many here. Then we found lunch in a typical, cheap Chilean restaurant. I had blood sausages with onions and fries, we got a side order of sopapillas with pebre, and Emily and I tried Fantaschop (fanta and beer). After a comfortable hour or so we waddled out into the sunshine to explore another feria artesenia. For dinner and bus breakfast, we intended to hit up one of the supermarkets in town. To determine which was  cheaper, we split up into teams and made a race to compare prices. Eric and I lost, but it was only because our store was farther away. Unimarc turned out to be cheaper than Santa Isabel, so we returned to stock up on provisions for our bus ride. We sat in the very front again. The movies this time were oddly dubbed – the audio and subtitles were in Spanish, but in different translations. It was quite odd. Luckily it was Tom Cruise again, and Emily explained to me what happened in the other one.

In Viña it was sunny but not hot- perfect weather. Eric and I walked back to Miraflores with high hopes of showers and our own beds. A successful college exploit on the whole.