Puerto Varas, Puerto Montt, Chiloé Island
We exited the country of steak and wine into the country of seafood and Pisco Sour, arriving at a small city called Puerto Varas where the near-freezing temperatures inside our hostel were compensated by the cozy beds and homemade breakfast. Eggs, yogurt & museli, and cake were a nice break from our typical Argentine desayuno of coffee, bread, white bread, breaded pastries and more bread (later proving to be quite standard in the rest of Chile as well) Our first night, we splurged on our 6 grand seafood diner…pesos that is (550=$1) at a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Donde el Gordito I had the Congrio (a Chilean specialty) topped with crab, assuredly leaving me feeling gordita.
The highlight of our first stop however, was our day trip tour to Chiloé Island. Though Chiloé has a surprising population of over 150,000, they choose to live in a much slower fashion that their fellow mainland Chileans. Most sustain themselves by farming and fishing. It was common to see horses as a primary mode of transportation and cows flooding the dirtroas in front of you.
Out the window of our van we saw green rolling hill after green rolling hill topped with Mark Bryanesque shrubbery and various domesticated animals. With the welcome of Spring feebly stood beautiful reminders of new life—calves, ponies, lambs, seagulls, etc.—always accompanied by an “awww” from the girls in our group.
For a snack, we splurged on deluctable Chilean oysters fro about US$3, and for lunch, Kim, Erin and I shared two huge abalone-like (“local” or “loco” to Chile) empanadas and a plate of salmon and potatoes for less than five dollars each. mmmm.
Our tour guide, Pablo, was a native Chilean and a fountain of knowledge about everything from rare birds to wagon wheels. The cherry on top of my South American experience, however, was seeing the Humbolt and Magellan penguins off the coast of Chiloé. When planning this trip, we had no idea we would even be far enough south to see penguins in the wild, and when we asked our trip leader about them, he said it was too early in the year even if we could! But after driving down a windy path and reaching the “penguin beach,” we were lucky enough to find a couple of fishermen who were willing to take us up close to the tiny islands where the penguins were beginning to congregate!(bucket list #42…check)! Though we only saw about 100 penguins (just males collecting branches for their nests) come January, over 5,000 penguins—males, their mates and their new chicks—would gather in the same location. Of “penguin season” our group was the second boat out this year!
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