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| Palafitos |
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| Bus on a boat |
What an absolutely incredible and special island. The south of Chile is notorious for it's beauty, but Chiloé was just something special. I know I haven't posted about Santiago in a while, but if feels weird to me to just write about normal life. Instead, I am going to tell you, and try to show you, the beauty of this place. One of the top 2 favorite places in all of South America (the parts that I've visited).
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| Castro <3 |
Thursday night we set off from the the central bus terminal and 14 hours later (Friday morning) we arrived in Castro, Chiloé. Since our final destination was an island, our bus had to drive onto a ferry to cross the water. I just really love boats and being on the water, so it was cool to be on a bus on a boat. We were able to get off the bus for the ferry ride and I was hit with a freezing cold brick wall as soon as I stepped off the bus. It was really nice though to be in the cold. When I am all bundled up and have the right clothes, I really enjoy the cold.
When our bus pulled into Castro we set off to find our hostel. It was on one of Chiloe's famous
palafitos, basically houses on sticks. CUTEST HOSTEL EVER! I fell in love with it. The atmosphere was just really chill AND it had a balcony that lead right out onto the water. So perfect! Since it's offseason, we had the place to ourselves. Just us and Pato, the receptionist. He was really cool too. Lot's of recommendations and just really fun to talk to.
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| The Hostel |
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| View from the dock |
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| Lauren and Lewis, my traveling companions |
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| The Church in Achao |
We wasted no time at all and within the hour we were out the door again setting off to explore. Destinations for day 1: Dalcahue and Achao. Such fun names. Everything is pretty close on the island and it only took us 20 minutes on a bus to get to Dalcahue. We ate at the local cocineria and it was delicious and cheap! Fried food and an abundance of sea food. I think my lunch total was $3... The artesania market in Dalcahue is famous for it's wool products, obviously I did not miss an opportunity to go shopping. What is a little less obvious is that I didn't buy anything! I was really impressed with myself (until the next day when I would buy a ton of stuff). Finally, we were at an artesania fair that didn't have all of the same crap that I see in Santiago/ saw in Peru and Bolivia. It was so great. Then we got on another bus, only to drive onto another ferry, to cross over onto the island where the city of Achao is. On the drive over, it began to rain. Like, really rain. The oldest church in Chiloé is in Achao, so we really wanted to get off and see it. We did, and about 30 minutes later we were on another bus heading back to Castro. It was raining SO HARD! We saw the church then sought refuge in this little beach lookout/shelter thing. Not the best idea. Why? Well, the closer you get to the water, the windier it gets. It was so out of control. I could barely walk because the wind was so powerful. I was in a fit of laughter and just could not stop. It was completely uncontrollable, but I just found the situation so hilarious.
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| Lots of German style homes |
By 6p.m. we were back in Castro and the sun had already gone down. We cooked dinner every night to save money but had to get a little creative because the hostel had no over (the ONLY negative about that place). We didn't know that there was no oven the first day, and what did we decide to make? Pizza and crumble for desert. So we ended up making the pizza in a wok and the crumble in another pot, but everything turned out really good. We are such resourceful college students.
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| Castro |
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| Wooden interior of Castro's church |
All of the next day we just hung around Castro. In the morning we went to the local vegetable/fish market. Such a great combination. It was a really good market too for such a small city, I guess those are always the best, at least the most authentic. We found this lady who sold homemade garlic sauces and OMG they were amazing! She let us try every single one and was just so nice, so of course we bought some to snack on. After the market, we headed down to the waterfront and walked along until we came up to the artesania fair in Castro. It was HUGE! We made about 3 rounds before actually buying anything, but we definitely bought. We had lunch across the street and I ate the biggest piece of fish I have ever seen in my life. Jeeez, everything was just so fun and perfect, and just
buena onda. I guess good vibes would be the best translation, but even that doesn't seem fitting.
Day 3 we went to the national park. We had somewhat putting it off, hoping to wake up to really good weather one day, and on day 3 we woke up to clear blue skies. The weather was PERFECT! We really, really lucked out. We explored the park with two German kids that we met, Carmine (who is actually Italian) and Sebastian, and took advantage of the beautiful weather. My favorite part was our beach picnic surrounded by cows. I know it seems like beaches and cows don't really fit together, but in Chiloé they exisit in harmony. There were so many cute little baby cows and horses, I just wanted to pet them all. I can't explain just how beautiful Parque Nacional Chiloe is, so here are some photos:
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| The Pacific Ocean |
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| Lauren, Sebastian, Carmine, Lewis |
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| !!! |
