We left Puerto Varas in the sunshine, which was not predicted. Off to Chiloe Island. We drove around Lake Llanquihue to the north and then west to board a ferry. There is no bridge to the island. After a 20-minute ferry ride, we arrived at Chiloe and went back in time. Life here is a contradiction – it is a very simple life and yet, by our standards, it can appear to be a very hard life. Using a credit card is pretty unheard of and yet we do have a television in our hotel room and there is Wi-fi (although I’ve not been able to get it to work yet).
Chiloe is a Mapuche word meaning “land of the seagulls.” The island is part of an archipelago located west of the coast of Chile between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. It’s main industry is seaweed and they are still making wooden boats here. We are supposed to see how these wooden fishing boats are constructed tomorrow.
Santi is still acting as our local guide. However, they did find a local guide who is flying in today to join us tomorrow. I am so impressed with this tour company. Since we lost our original local guide to a family emergency and there was no one available, they asked Carolina to pinch-hit. She has just returned home after 21 days and has not seen her husband and two children for a while. The tour company, in order to accommodate our group, flew her and her entire family here so that she can be with us tomorrow. They will all travel with us tomorrow. How nice to see this kind of consideration and respect between a corporation and their employees.
So, Santi is still telling us fibs with his sunglasses on – but not often. He fills us in on the political and economic history of Chile and Chiloe. The average salary here is the equivalent of $400US/month. This does not seem like much, but the Chiloeans are fairly self-sufficient and utilize the barter system to a great degree. The one area that the low income affects is higher education as university tuition is approximately $1,000 US a month.
We ride through beautiful landscapes of the glacial moraine. We see lots of cattle and sheep farms and the island is pretty sparsely populated.
Santi finds out that this is the time of festivals on the island. By festival, I think it is what we know as a type of county fair. He is going to try to find out how we can get to visit one.
We head to the coast to have lunch. Our appetizer is an abalone empanata, followed by grilled hake (a white fish) and salad; and once again, good conversation with our fellow travelers.
After lunch we get life preservers on and are taken to a boat. We are about to enter the “national geographic moment” of the day. We’re off to see the Humboldt and Magelland penguins in their natural habitat! What a thrill it was to see hundreds of penguins just hanging out on these huge rock outcroppings in the ocean. Our captain maneuvered the boat so all could see and photograph this natural wonder. We are really hoping our photos come out as these guys really blend into the rock. We also saw so many different birds – flightless ducks, flying ducks, red-legged cormorants and about four other type of cormorants. Then to top it off a few sea otters appeared. The penguins are a sure thing, but seeing an otter is not. Truly a thrill to be able to see all of this so closely.
We left the world of nature to then go find the festival. And, find it we did; or rather, Santi and
Fernando did. The festival was in a rural area. The first thing we did was see a gaucho rodeo. There were about 20 gauchos on horseback, demonstrating in teams of how they herd cows. This was done in a ring with only one cow, but you got the idea. It was a a bit hard to see the cow being under stress while being herded, but they did have the ring padded and I think tried to be humane.
We then went to the “fair” part and what fun that was. Came upon some men roasting something with long poles (about 8 feet long) over a fire pit. They make a potato mash with lard and cover the pole; turning it until it is cooked and browned. The potato is cut off in sections, laid flat, spread with cooked pork, rolled and cut into smaller portions. None of us tried it – looked too much like a heart attack waiting to happen. The gentlemen cooking this dish talked some of our group into turning the poles – they really seemed to get a kick out of getting us involved. Even to the point of sharing their drinks with some of the men!
There is a popular apple cider drink that they prepared here. A bag is filled with apples. The bag is put on a wooden trough with another wood plank on top. Two people turn wooden screws on either end to press the apples and the juice runs down the trough into a container. This juice is then put into empty wine bottles. It is then fermented for about 10 days. Yes, we did drink it. We’ll know tomorrow if this was a good idea.
There was a livestock show, crafts, homemade honey and food vendors. Probably the funniest thing to watch was us being watched. As Santi said “you were the only gringos there.” As we were watching the cider demo, I saw everyone around us staring and pointing and getting a big kick out of us.
On to our next hotel of the trip. It is an all-log building and appears to be fairly old. Not fancy by any means, but adequate. No internet again though, so this will be posted – whenever.
Had pisco sours out on the deck while watching the sun come down. Dinner was salmon and of course, wine. Great conversation with our fellow travelers. It is amazing how easy it is to talk with this group of people. Everyone is so interesting and the conversation comes so easily.
No comments:
Post a Comment