Back to Chile on the search for penguins on Chiloe island

27-29 October

+ The bus ride back to Chile wasn´t anything super special except when we crossed some towns where a lot of ash from the volcano in Chile had fallen. We were sad to see how a nice landscape had changed so much; but what can you do? This is the nature.

 The ashes 

+ After taking couple of buses and a ferry we arrived to beautiful Chiloe. Chiloe is an island in the South of Chile. The people from the island are quite different to the rest of Chilenos and most of them are indigenous and mestizos (of mixed origin). They are very proud to be from this island. The people there are very sympathetic and humble. Most of them are farmers and fishers.

+ We visited a town on the North of the island called Ancud. The surroundings are very beautiful and made us think on a Van Gogh picture. The architecture is also very particular with colorful houses and churches made entirely of wood.

+ The first afternoon we visited a Spanish fortress and some of the beaches and cliffs around the town.

Spanish Fortress

 

 + Chiloe is known for two things: its unique Neo-Clasical wooden Churches and the Humbolt Pinguins, which only habitate on this island. Of course, we went to visit the pinguins which, in this season, come to some areas of the island to put their eggs. We went on a boat to reach some of the rocks where they live. Pinguins are one of the most funny animals in the world (we will explain more about pinguins in a future post). We could also see many other birds and sea otters.

The sea otters

+ As we said previously, the main economy of Chiloe is fishing. And they have awesome, cheap seafood. We went to eat the traditional dish "Curanto". It is a combination of seafood with meet and potatoes all together and it is really delicious. Check the size of the muscles.

Curanto Lunch 

Gosh!! we ate sooooo much :-)

+ And how did we spend our evenings in such a calm and isolated island?? Well, enjoying beautiful sunsets from our hostel, with the company of fellow travelers and awesome pisco sours (a cocktail containing pisco, lime juice, egg whites and sugar) that Dani prepared. You drink pisco sours in Peru and Chile and we knew it from our trip to Peru in 2009. Dani was more than delighted to find it in Chile again.

Our hostel