This large and green island located a few km. southwest of Puerto Montt is not only an island geographically, but also culturaly, as everything there is so different from the rest of Chile.
Chiloé, the second largest island in South America (after Tierra del Fuego), stayed completely isolated from the rest of the Spanish empire for almost 200 years, after a Mapuche insurrection in 1599 that cut all communications with the mainland (a boat from Lima stopped there only once a year). It was also the last site in South America that remained loyal to the Spanish crown, until it surrendered in 1826.
This isolation led to the unique culture of islanders, a mix of natives and Spanish, and to the need of using only local materials for the constructions. That's the main reason why there are so many wooden buildings in this island, including around 150 beautiful wood churches built by the Jesuits, most of the World Heritage Monuments.
Chiloé reminded me a lot to the Celtic culture of Galicia, in Northwestern Spain, and less so, to Scotland. Green landscapes, rainy days, dramatic tides that cover and uncover kilometers of land, the devotion of its inhabitants to fishing and "marisqueo" (seafood picking), their mythology ("traucos", ghost ships, strange sea creatures,...). Everything is "magical" here, and I think the rain we enjoyed almost all days we were there helped us get this feeling.
Some villages, and specially Castro, the capital, have "palafitos" next to the sea. "Palafitos" are houses built on top of the water using wood columns as support. None of the people we talked to were able to explain what the reason of building this houses on the water was, but they certainly were something unique. Below them you can find thousands of empty mussles shells, and I still wonder if they were brought there by the tides or they are the left-overs of seafood dinners at palafitos.
The island is surrounded by smaller islands, also connected by ferries, and all over the place there are "forgotten" fisherman villages. Once again, a car is the perfect way to travel the island since by bus you can only reach the most touristry or larger locations.
I loved Dalcahué, with beautiful fishing boats dispersed between the village and the Quinchao island, right next to it, but there are many other villages, like Chonchi or Achao, in Quinchao, that are also worth visiting.
We ate great and very cheap seafood here, something I appreciated specially because in Argentina was not so common. Congrio (sorry, but I don't know the name in English), salmon, trout and hake are all common and excellent, and for seafood all shellfish were quite common and delicious: clams, mussles (steamed mussles were excellent), oysters,... You could see people picking them at the beaches when the tide was low, just like the do in Galicia.
One shocking discovering was finded dozens of dead "jibias", huge calamars (almost 1 meter long), on the beaches at low tides. One family at one palafito explained to us that they grounded themselves to death on purpose, because the temperature of the sea was rising due to global warming. The father of the owner of our lodging also explained to us that although that had happened before, this was the first time in 30 years.
After three relaxing days at the island (due to the weather and the nice place we stayed at Castro), I decided to head north to Puerto Varas, from where I was hoping to explore the Chilean side of the Lake Region. Xavi decided to stay one day more in Chiloé, so again, I started traveling on my own.
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