Journal... Part 3

Ancud, Chiloe Island, 2/25

Today marks a month since I left the States.  Seems like a long time, but so far it has been great. Hope the next month goes as smoothly.

Last Monday I returned to the Navimag ferry office in Puerto Montt to see if I could improve my reservations… I had nothing but a smile telling me that I actually had reservations for the 8th of March and Navimag does not have a great reputation for efficiency in their paper work.  As it turned out, they could find no record of my reservation, but found an A cabin for me for Feb. 28, and gave me the senior discount when I paid for it.  So, with ticket in hand, I took the bus to Ancud, the northern most city of Chiloe. Part of the bus trip was a 30 minute ferry ride over the straights connecting Chiloe with the mainland.  The straights seemed to be alive with sea lions; probably saw a dozen or more groups of 2 and 3 during the crossing, and ……PENGUINS!  Two of them, porpoising along 50 yards from the ferry.  I’ve seen more since, but seeing live penguins for the first time was great.  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Ancud shoreline in front of the hostal

 Ancud is a small fishing port, 20,000 people but looks smaller, facing west inside a large protected bay.  My hostal, Hostal Mundo Nuevo is run by a Swiss-German guy in his 30s, with the help of a couple of girls in their 20’s, one American and one English.  They are both here at the moment, though the English girl is finishing up her 6 month stay and the American girl is just starting.  Guests are a combination of  Chileans, Germans, English, etc., plus two more American girls in their 20s who are working in Ancud, one in a restaurant and another running some kind of a tour business.  They started out teaching English in Santiago, and when they finished, came here… and evidently are happy as clams.

And speaking of clams, Chiloe is the shellfish capital of the known world. Unfortunately the cholera outbreak makes raw shellfish a no-no, but the cooked ones are OK and I’ve had lots.  The regional dish is curanto, a clam-bake kind of thing in which a large pit oven is filled with clams, mussels or a couple of kinds, sausages, mutton or other meats, potatoes and potato breads; covered with huge leaves; and left for an hour or so.  In restaurants it is more or less the same, but simmered over a burner instead.  Mine, served heaping of a large dinner plate included a bout a dozen each of mussels and clams, 3 or 4 very large mussels of a different variety, a hot dog like sausage (but better.. though not great),  a meaty smoked pork rib, a large chunk of chicken breast, a potato,  and two different steamed potato breads, one evidently a mixture of mashed potatoes and flour, the other, which was grey, made of dried potatoes.  The dried potato one was better, with a cornbread-like consistency.  The other was about what you’d expect of a steamed unleavened mix of flour and potatoes…. wet and leaden.  All served with a cup of the broth for dipping.  The shellfish were good as were the meats, and the steamed potato breads were… ah, interesting.  Overall, a stout peasant dish and, thought locally famous, perhaps an indication of why Chilote restaurants have not yet hit Chicago.
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 Ancud harbor

The restaurant, El Cangrejo, on an upper floor overlooking the street, has walls completely covered with business cards of visitors going back into the 60s…. near my table were cards from a New York Times reporter, an assortment of Northern European businessmen (Finland, Norway, Germany, etc.), some US college professors and the owner of the Rio Grande Motel in Gila Bend, Arizona.

In addition to eating shellfish (mussels with green sauce of parsley, chives, onion, lemon and oil) and empanadas de locos (really good…. empanadas are turnovers, and locos are abalone-like univalves) I had one really bad local dish which rivals the Springfield horseshoe as a gastronomic disaster: a huge mound of greasy French fries topped by grilled chorizo, bits of meat, chunks of hot dog, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes and warmed pickle mix of cauliflower, carrots and pickles… all topped with mayo.  Yummm.  I ate about 1/5.

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Where was I?  Ah, …in addition to eating shellfish and seeing Ancud, I took a day trip to Castro and toured the penguin colony.  The trip to Castro started out as a penguin tour, but when I got to the hotel running the tour I found that it had been cancelled because of heavy seas over on the pacific side of the island, so the other two people from the hostal, a Chilean mother and daughter--the mother a MD and the daughter an architecture student, and I took the bus to Castro.  They were on vacation from Santiago and were interesting company from whom to learn a bit more about middle class life in Chile.  The mother works as a pathologist in a children’s hospital, has traveled to the US (New York and Memphis) for conventions.  The daughter is in the next to last year of a 6 year architecture program and wants to design socially responsible housing for low income people.  They both had studied English, and we spoke English for a while, then drifted back into Spanish over lunch.

The Chilean mother and daughter 

[Alejandra and Javiera. I am now married to Alejandra. JS 2009]

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Interior of wooden church in Castro

Castro is also a fishing port with a bit of tourism thrown in, actually smaller than Ancud though the historic capital of Chiloe.  It is best know for it’s wooden cathedral and palafitos, waterside houses and businesses built on stilts over the bay.  It’s also known for the 1960 tsunami, said to be the worst in recorded history, which devastated the island.  Interesting and worth a visit, but the day in Castro was enough.  I had originally planned to move there after a few days in Ancud, but decided not to bother.

The real sights of Chiloe are rural, not urban.  The interior east side of the island, facing an inland sea, has lots of small fishing villages (each with its own wooden church, together comprising a world heritage historic site).  The countryside is a mix of open pastures and woodlands, small wooden houses with steep roofs and red and blue trim, fenced pig and cow lots, house sized wood piles, dairy cattle, potato plots, and narrow gravel roads.  Looks like the countryside in James Harriott’s (All Creatures Great and Small) England, and in fact, Europeans comment on how much it looks like Scotland, Ireland or Galicia, the NW Spanish province from which many of the settlers came.

Technologically, it has a very 19th century feel, with ox teams and horse carts on the roads (and cars and Toyota pick ups, of course), wood stoves for heating and cooking, hand milking, chickens and ducks and piglets around the houses, and so on.  By each lane leading to a house is a platform with two or 3 large milk cans on it, either waiting to be picked by the twice daily milk truck, or to be taken back to the barn for the next milking.

The inhabited part of west side looks much the same, but is hillier… the island’s high points are all on the western edge, but instead of facing the calm inland sea they face the open pacific.  High cliffs, rock headlands, small villages sheltered by islands, long curving sandy beaches… and incredible scene.  And virtually empty, even where there are roads and occasional
villages.  

Here, on the NE corner of the island, are the penguin colonies I visited.  The penguin tour, one of many available in Ancud, is operated out of a small hotel by an Argentinean brother and sister in their 20’s.  In good weather, and if there are passengers, they offer two daily van tours a around the northern point of the island to a fishing hamlet called Puñhuil…. "windy place” in the Mapuche of Chiloe…. On the way to the penguins they stop at the high points to view the view, and briefly at a mud flat to see the flamingos (! – a definite twofer for the incipient birder).  Puñhuil is a group of a half dozen fishermen’s houses in a cove sheltered by 4 small islands, which house the penguin colonies.  We were taken out to the islands by local fishermen in sturdy open wooden boats of about 20 feet. The penguins, both Humboldt and Magellan penguins nest here, are about 2 ½ feet tall and look like…  well, penguins.  Black and white, the two species with slightly different markings on their bills and faces.  They nest in areas of the islands where they can excavate burrows 5 or 6 feet deep.  They spend about ¾ of their time out fishing.  At home, they mostly stand around, socially, in groups of 3 or 4.  In addition to penguins, there were sea lions and sea otters, the latter, very unafraid of people and interested in the boats, approached when the fishermen called (probably some feeding goes on).  The fishermen were friendly and knowledgeable about the birds (another 6 or 8 new species I had not seen before, the names of which I will be happy to recount if asked) and animals, interested in the tourists and where they came from; altogether pleasant.  In fact, I continue to be struck by how friendly the people are.

Puñhuil and the Penguin Islands

After the boat trip I asked our guides about staying to return with the afternoon group, and since that worked out fine, I spent the day in the hamlet and on the surrounding beaches.  The weather was pleasant, skies partially sunny with some clouds later in the day, the scenery was great and I had a fine lunch of empanads de locos and a couple of beers at the house of a fisher-family that
serves a bit of food.  The second tour returned on time, and it was back to the hostal.  Great  day!

Puerto Natales, March 4, 2005

Following the 4 day ferry trip, I have arrived at Puerto Natales:  not the end of the earth, but you can go there from here by bus... which is what I plan to do in a few days.  Puerto Natales spreads across the windswept pampas at the edge of the Fiordo de Ultima Espearanza.... that’s right, Last Hope Fjord,  and 9 km from the Argentine border.  It’s a small town, perhaps 10,000 or so inhabitants, of low  buildings and sheet metal clad houses dedicated to fishing, sheep and tourists.  When the ferry comes in, the town fills with backpackers, stocking up on supplies and renting equipment for Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, a couple of hours north by road.  The park is famous mostly for the sheer rock towers, but the total area covered is huge.  The trekkers, for whom this is one of the world-class destinations, a bit like Nepal, take a 10 day or so hike around the perimeter.  One can also do day hikes, 2 or three day trips, etc.   Unfortunately, it’s raining today and the forecast is for more of the same, so I don’t know whether I’ll get top the park or not. Not too much point if you can’t see the mountains.  

The Puerto Eden

Luckily, the weather for the trip down by boat was good, three bright sunny days and one misty one with a little rain.  The ferry, the Puerto Eden, is pretty substantial if not especially pretty.  There are two decks for trucks and cars, with passenger cabins above.  My cabin, which I shared with a German guy and a Swedish couple, had two bunk beds, one on each side, with a narrow passage between them and a porthole on the wall.  At the foot of one bed were a sink and the doorway, and on the other side were four small lockers.  Each cabin has its own bath, but the baths are clustered together down the hall.  Everything was surface clean (though a bit grimy in the cracks) and very pleasant over all.  Meals, included in the passage, were in the salon/dining room (below the cabins) at long communal tables.  We carried our trays through a serving line, then found seats.  The food was fairly insipid... lots of carbs, no garlic... but not too bad.  The two almuerzos were lasagna and pastel de cholco (very good) and the three dinners were merluza (a bland white fish), spaghetti, and salmon.. Breakfast  included eggs...(!)  the first breakfast eggs I’ve had in Chile that I didn’t  cook myself. I ended up eating all my meals with a group of five Chilean friends on vacation, two men and three women (thought didn’t figure out who the couples were for a day or so).  We always shared a couple of bottles of wine with meals. In front of the cabins and salon was the pilot house, which was open to us most of the time, and on each side was a partially roofed section of deck...good place to shelter from the wind or sun.   The roof of both the pilot house and the cabins was open with benches, and most passengers spend their time on deck.  

On the Puerto Eden

For the most part, the trip was in channels from 80 to several hundred yards wide, among islands, so there was almost always something to see, if only the islands themselves, sea birds and the occasional seal.  We saw only one whale, and a few dolphins and penguins.  The islands in the north were forested, but as we moved south the vegetation became shorter and shrubbier, until the last few hours when it was pretty barren and even the low peaks were snow clad.  We passed one glacier, several miles away, and a few small icebergs.  Overall it was a great trip, with good weather and interesting people.

Passing through the narrowest channel

In addition to the Chilean group, who turned out to be exceptionally pleasant,  cultivated, world travelers and had visited Thailand, Indonesia, Europe, South Africa, the US and so on, there was the usual assortment of  international backpackers..... Germans, Spanish, Swedes, English, Australians, Canadians,  and a few Americans.  Met a young Canadian guy about Andy’s age, from a little town north of Vancouver in BC.  Wearing mostly camo, thin goatee, tall and lanky with a major Canadian accent and a vocabulary that, at first, seemed pretty limited, he turned out to be a landscaper, interested and knowledgeable about plants and animals, and though not a stunning conversationalist, aye?, a nice kid.  I also met a young couple from Barcelona (wow! I really understand Spanish Spanish, after dealing with Chilean for 5 weeks!), a Canadian guy with a Mexican wife, and the first real jerk of the trip.  He is also Canadian, in his 40’s, evidently combining business with pleasure (?) by traveling in Chile and Argentina.... and hating everything about it. He’d “had it up to here” with South America, had been paying over $100 a night for hotels that weren’t up to his standards, the towns were dirty; accommodations were third rate; food was, well... not Canadian.  I spent a few minutes in his company and then tried to avoid him, but one of my Chilean friends, Juan, ended up sitting at table with him for breakfast.  Juan, and all his group, speak English (though we had been speaking Spanish) so he struck up a conversation, which I couldn’t help overhearing.  Juan got the same earful.....  third world, third rate, too expensive, dumpy ship, needed to have his own cabin and bath, room mate snored, food was bad, not like Hawaii or “real” cruse ships, etc.  He was so overwhelmingly negative you had to feel sorry for him. Where I have been having a wonderful time, staying in pleasant clean rooms, eating and drinking well, and meeting interesting people; all on $40 a day, he was managing to have a thoroughly unpleasant time (and sharing unpleasantries with all around him) while spending 3 or 4 times that.  Pity.  




Chilean friends on the ferry

When we got into Puerto Natales yesterday it was clear, but today is rainy, cool and overcast.... appropriate for Patagonia in early fall.   The kids started school yesterday, all dressed in school sweaters, white shirts and ties, with dark slacks for boys or plaid skirts for girls; and the tourist outfitters are looking at the end of the season.  The restaurant where I had a great meal last night, was only about half full during the dinner hour (9:00 to 10:00 PM), whereas, according to the waiter, they had been full every night for the last two months.  The major dishes of the area involve seafood, especially local king crab, and lamb.  I had the best meal of the trip, a gratané of scallops and king crab, with a lettuce, tomato and avocado salad and a half bottle of wine. The sauce for the gratané contained cream and  brandy and was slightly sweet from the shell fish; such a good meal that I finished up with a real coffee and a glass of pisco añejo.  Prices are a bit higher here than further north, since everything not produced locally comes in by ship or overland through Argentina, but still pretty inexpensive by international standards, and the meal was about $22.  About  twice what I usually spend, but worth it.

The hostal I’m in, Casa Cecilia, is one of the highpoints of the backpacker’s trail, known far and wide and recommended by all the guide books.  It’s a red roofed, sheet metal clad house with an open interior courtyard covered by a skylight.  Two stories of rooms open onto the courtyard and there are several baths for those like me without private bath.  My room is small, but bright and pleasant with a window opening onto the courtyard, a single bed, carpet and chair.  The bath, across the courtyard a few steps, is small but bright and clean with a tub/shower rather than the usual stall.  Breakfast,  with conversation in German for a change, was homemade whole wheat bread, butter, cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, juice and cheese.  The staff are pleasant, owner is Swiss German, and the “receptionist” – a traveler staying for a while for free room and board and (maybe) some spending money, is a charming German girl who speaks excellent Spanish and English.... her Spanish better than mine, ….and probably her English as well.

Today I’m getting my laundry done and my boots repaired.... tongue is coming off,  and I plan to engage in a major lamb dinner.  There is evidently a restaurant that offers a daily tenedor libre (all-you-can-eat, literally “free fork”) asado de cordero (lamb BBQ).  There are also several other Argentine style parriadas, specializing in meats cooked over wood fires,  so I’ll definitely find something interesting today.  If the weather doesn’t  clear, I’ll probably head on to Punta Arrenas tomorrow, and then on to Tierra del Fuego.  From there, I’ll probably head north, Antarctica being the only other option.

Journal.... Part 4