Chiloé

“So, what next?”

“Well, we will go to Chiloé. And it will be good.”

“I thought we were already in Chile?”

I was, by now, used to this kind of total, brutish ignorance. After all, my brother had spent the previous two weeks insisting he could speak Spanish by adding dado to the end of English words. And this from a scientist! At any rate, it didn’t matter much, the big man had long since given up creative control over the trip to his reclusive younger brother, and a twenty year out of date Lonely Planet guide to Chile. The book itself was thin on details when it came to the archipelago, the strange collection of isles forming the buttocks of Chile’s long and slender figure, but there was more than enough intrigue surrounding Chiloé to tickle ones curiosity. Any place with a reputation for witches and Jesuits is not to be missed.

Pucón

We were, in fact, at this time, in a karaoke bar in Pucón, somewhere close to 02h00, the natural starting point of an invasion of Chiloé. And why not? Pucón is great, and karaoke bars are terrific places to embrace a culture. If you pay attention, there are all the subtleties of language and energy and taste and etiquette and hierarchy and much more besides. Not to mention drinking. The Tuesday night talent may be a bit raw, but the pitchers of Cristal are cheap and cold and you don’t have to share them with shouty North American tourists. And we were celebrating. It wasn’t everyday we had the prescience of mind to buy tickets for a Wednesday morning 07h00 JAC double-decker to Ancud a full day before departure. Such remarkable foresight and organisation needed toasting. You have to celebrate the small wins, as they say.

Pucón is a small town full of smoky wooden cabins on the shore of a lake so pristine it looks like amniotic fluid. Behind it, the great nipple of Volcán Villarrica rises to a white capped peak, and all around is more or less outdoor heaven. Name an activity, you can do it. In the winter, though, its frigid stuff - the sort of temperatures that encourage expletives - so we were packed in tight under a low ceiling, a fire and a couple of heaters, big orange bulbs, and tables squeezed right up close to a lone mic and big box TV displaying lyrics. Although a full convert to the merits of an ice cold Cristal pitcher, not to mention the Lake District refinery of Kunstmann, big brother Jason was now learning about the darker side of Chileno drinking: a penchant for infusing soft drinks where they don’t belong. In this case, Fanschop, a hideous and distressing addition of Fanta Orange to a pint or pitcher of beer. Chile is no place for purists, a land of remixes and a little anarchy. Of course, the real lesson of this kind of back alley karaoke bar is a full frontal confrontation with South America’s continental obsession with Rock and Roll. Far beyond mere passion. I’m not too sure if it extends all the way North, but in Chile and Argentina at least, it seems like everyone is normal until you take them to a football match or put ACDC on the stereo, and then some act of possession takes place and they become pure outpourings of energy and emotion. Where the guy selling you cashew nuts in a tiny kiosk in a tiny riverside town looks like he just walked straight out of a Metallica concert and the vegetable shop plays nothing but Led Zeppelin. Nothing quite warms the spirits like admirably committed renditions of Gimme Shelter and Back in Black at 2 A.M. in the Lake District.

JAC double deckers are easy to spot, since they’re overtly large and yellow, so I was quite sure that the vehicle pulling away from me as I legged it down the street was indeed a JAC. As it happens, I’m not faster than a bus, but I’m pretty sure that that driver deliberately ignored the wailing and hollering gringo in his rearview. A lesser man would have found being left behind by his pre-arranged vehicular transport an upsetting turn of events, Jay, however, was giggling like a toddler watching a monkey play with itself, in full embrace of the absurdity of our situation. We were standing in the middle of the street, absorbed in the dense mist that descends on Pucón at that time of year, in a state of packing that made us look like two fugitives who had had to cobble our things together in a mad panic while the police banged on our door. Without a belt, my jeans had fallen some way around my knees, but my arms were so stuffed with bags and loose items I could perform no remedial action. I stood with bare thighs exposed, both arms clutched firmly around a giant wheelie suitcase that no longer had functioning wheels, stuffed too full to close the zip, items sticking out on all sides, while my hands clasped a mishmash of food and toiletries grabbed in haste on the way out. Jay, too, had a half packed bag on his back and two hands full of assorted items. A trail of clothes and books and stationary and food that had been dropped in the pursuit drew a line from us to the front door of the hostel, where an old chap of furrowed brow stood in apparent confusion, a tub of honey and a few pairs of socks in his hands. So busy had we been congratulating ourselves for booking tickets a day in advance that we had neglected to do any other sort of organising or planning or packing. It turns out that if you want to catch an 07h00 JAC double decker, you need to get out of bed before that time. Who knew?

All this to say, we were in the soup. Ours was not a budget to afford luxuries like second round bus tickets. But then well before the finger pointing could begin in earnest, that old man at the door - still holding my socks - came to our rescue.

“Ven. No se preocupen.”

Without much more than a wave, in an act of grotesque Chileno generosity, the old boy strapped us into the back of his van like two naughty teenagers being sent home from summer camp and set off in pursuit of that bus. We would race the JAC to Villarica. Only, our saviour was not a man to be hurried, he did things in his own time, and wore a thick wool jersey to prove it. Never has the drive from Pucón to Villarrica been made with less urgency. Positively geriatric. He eased onto the highway easily 30 km per hour under the speed limit, as if the accelerator was something delicate and fragile, like some kind of porcelain or crystal that couldn’t be pushed on with any force. High hopes of screeching tires and reckless overtaking were dashed, exchanged for serene cruising, more zen master than speed racer. You might’ve called it a lesson in temperament and calm under pressure. Besides, who were we to doubt the old codger’s tactics, we still resembled two baboons sorting through stolen treasure as we finished packing our bags in the back, trying not to get too worked up about the haste of the operation.

Sure enough, when we glided into the Villarica bus terminal the big ol' JAC was there waiting for us. Time moves slowly in this part of the world, it only took a little experience to know it. There was a knowing smile that sent us off, I think he had enjoyed watching the gringos sweat.

Ancud

Most of the action - if you can call it that - in Chiloé takes place around it’s main town, Castro. But the first stop on the big island is the old capital, Ancud. Ancud perhaps doesn’t have too much you’d write home about, but it is still horribly scenic, and has all the hallmarks of the primary Chilote aesthetic: Deeply tranquil, colourful wooden houses, quiet streets, frequent mist and drizzle, glassy still waters. And green, by God. Chiloé is not a place where grass struggles to grow, and the chlorophyll seems to carry extra punch. Like God has turned up the saturation. Maybe it was just the season, but it seemed to me like the first half of the day was nearly always some degree of wet. It was raining just about all the time. An all round moist affair. In fact, no one really knows just how much it rains in Chiloé, although everyone agrees its a lot. The guys at the weather service pretend that they know, and they’ll sometimes give you a number to prove it, but the real amount is a complete mystery. Anyhow, Chiloé is a classic of the wooden house, soft rain and chimney smoke aesthetic. If you’re the sort of person who likes a cosy nook in a wooden cabin with a good cup of tea, a fire and a book, then Chiloé is a basic utopia. An indie-folk playlist come to life.

Ancud was founded by the Spaniards as a city-fort sort of thing several lifetimes ago, so it kind of juts out into the Chacao channel, surrounded by water on three sides. Even the cheap hostels are seafront and packed with views, and when the sun does come out it is stunning, in a shimmery and hypnotic sort of way. The primary peculiarities might be saved for other places, but Ancud was still an excellent place for two large australopithecines to test the power of the local cuisine to cure shameful hangovers. So we looked for what the 1992 Lonely Planet assured us was the absolute deep end of traditional Chilote dining: curanto. Curanto is, in fact, very easy to find, and the best around - according to at least one eyeball witness - was just around the corner from our hostel. A tiny place, tucked into a corner of the port, with a deeply elegant wooden interior and the sweetest of geriatric waiters. A neatly trimmed moustache, a starched white apron, a shuffling walk. The old fellow seemed like he had been gently serving beers since the Spanish left, not a disagreeable bone in his body. Curanto itself appears to have been the answer to a fisherman, a butcher and a potato farmer getting together to answer the question: What happens if we put absolutely everything into a bowl and make a brothy soup? The resulting admixture is a heaving mass of mussels, clams, barnacles, chicken, pork, and more or less the entire taxonomy of potatoes, served in an enormous bowl from which it still overflows. With a side of tremendously dense bread, made from potato of course. Traditional curanto, the good stuff, is cooked in a giant hole in the ground by building a fire and laying rocks over it before tossing the outrageous collection of ingredients on top and covering it all with nalca leaves, putting a few wet sacks over the whole catastrophe - because why not - and burying it, creating a sort of de facto pressure cooker. Just marvelous.

The easy mistake with curanto is to fail to adequately prepare mentally. This is not a meal you can just show up and polish off. It requires a still mind. Big match temperament. Full concentration. Really, you need a strategy and perfect execution. Now, Jay and I are big fellas, just reward for lifetimes of winning food games. Many a buffet had disappeared before us. Indeed, we weren’t strangers to being asked to leave at an ‘all you can eat’ Chinese night. Yet, we were roundly defeated by the steaming oceanic-potato mix from the underground. We paid our respects to the meal in solemn silence, humbled by the astounding quantity. Like two lions who had killed a giraffe and suddenly found it to be all too much to deal with. The flavour of the thing was not in question. The whole underground burial ritual keeps everything wonderfully juicy and tender. The potatoes are buttery and exquisitely soft, yet varied in texture and taste. It’s only the ridiculous quantity and variety of ingredients that boggles the newcomer. I had no idea there were so many kinds of potatoes. My world of potatoes had expanded in dizzying fashion, more species in a single meal than I had previously known to exist. We were defeated, but there was no shame in it. Our egos maybe a little bruised but what of it, our culinary perspective had been stretched, and our geriatric waiter nodded in approval: “Venga, welcome to Chiloé.” Such an astonishing meal could only mean this is a good place, a sign of a people who know how to live.

Castro

Ancud is worth more than one night, but you know, life moves forward and all that, so we went to Castro. By population, Castro is more or less the same size as Ancud, but as the capital, it wears the pants on the island. Most of the things people visit Chiloé for are here or nearby. The first thing to note is that when you’ve been told stories of mythical creatures and loch ness monsters and witches and churches etcetera, then Castro is sort of disappointingly normal. Without the fort or port infrastructure of Ancud, it does feel a lot more Chilote though. Of course, water is a key feature once again - Castro sits on the edge of a huge long inlet from the Sea of Chiloé and has something like three rivers running through it. Things are architecturally similar to Ancud except two key additions - palofitos and churches. Both are hard to miss, especially since they’re probably the only two things you know about before you arrive.
If you haven’t been told about palofitos before you arrive in Castro, and you arrive at low tide, you won’t take long to conclude that Chilote builders are total morons. What kind of idiots build lovely colourful houses and then put them on enormous rickety stilts hundreds of metres from the water? Like beautiful pink flamingos on long, wobbly legs submerged rather in mud than in water. But then you’d be informed that Castro in fact has a tidal swing of something like 8 m in height on a fairly long and shallow tidal plain, which makes things kind of tricky for building seaside villas. So the Chilotes figured out that if you stick your house on trees, you can build way closer to the sea and just let the tide rise right up to your front deck, and enjoy the water lapping at your feet. It’s beautiful. Genius. Wonderful stilted houses of all colours decorating the banks of the river mouth and sea.

Chile’s lake district is chock-full of egregiously beautiful lakes, massive bodies of crystal clear water so still and reflective you can’t be sure whether they are real or painted. The water around Castro is no different. Even the sea is dead flat, glassy and glossy. It teases you to go paddle on it. Taunts you. Every sly glance you take implores you to find a kayak or build a raft. Wills you to take up oars. Be careful though, for the Castro local who will rent you a kayak will also sell you dreams of paddling out on the low tide, enjoying an easy glide out on the shallows before returning ecstatically, triumphantly on the high tide, paddle aloft in victory as the 8m swing takes you all the way to the front deck of your hostel. And nothing of the sort will occur.

Weirdly, most of the time you’ll be hard pressed to find a kayak for rent without going on some kind of tour, usually alongside British or American tourists with soft, pliable exteriors and loud voices who seem to have never performed any sort of outdoor activity in their life. If you do strike it big, kayak-wise, you won’t be getting any sort of racing device either. You will either get a tiny white water rafting thing ill-suited to the grand expanses of ocean and lake, and that grand oafs such as my brother and I literally cannot fit into; or more likely one of those big, steady plastic numbers that are terribly stable and easy going on the kind of calm estuarine stuff Castro was throwing about, but that take on water in alarming fashion under any sort of wave action. It was two of these, large and yellow, that the man would rent us.
We drifted out and down the Castro waterfront, the open tops taking on a little water but nothing sinister. We eased along in regal fashion, engulfed in Chiloé’s serene charm. There was nothing grandiose about the views, but the colourful palofitos, sapphire water, friendly fisherman and newly emerging sun were irresistable. A treat for over-stimulated nervous systems. I could tell already that all the supposed culture and myth of this place wasn’t going to cut it with Jay. It was ill suited to the big fellow, he preferred his intrigue in more straightforward pursuits. In such cases it’s paramount to get out in front of any trouble, strike before they get too sullen and unresponsive. There are few things worse than a bored and sulky travel companion. The obvious strategic solution was a couple of boat races out on the Castro sea. A little heart pumping action to stir the soul. I took him on the outside, out of the slipstream with a narrow pass to the left giving the perfect angle to help a little water into his face, and we were off. These were no Oxford-Cambridge affairs, no crisp paddling expertise were demonstrated, but I’ll be damned if there wasn’t effort and strain, a fit of commotion and competition to rival any. Lot’s of splashing and shouting even if there wasn’t all that much speed, or indeed, movement. History would say I was easily caught and bested, but that’s how it is when you face off against an opponent who’s stolen 60% of available calories during your childhood.

Of course, with such frenzied activity, recovery was of the highest import. Besides, the tide had barely moved at all and we would have to settle in for some time to come. It turns out that epic tidal swings are rather slow. To the ignorant observer, you’d be forgiven for thinking God had turned the thing off for the day. We were no fools though, we never did this kind of thing without suitable supplies. So, we bound our boats together with our paddles and lay back, letting our makeshift raft drift in a self-determined fashion while we dined on ice cold Cristal, a giant tub of roasted cashew nuts and enough yellow-wrappered Sahne-Nuss chocolate to satisfy the fat kid in Willy Wonka’s factory, much like I imagine heaven might be. Like the Romans, in a way. The passing Chilote fisherman and boat skippers seemed to be equal parts frustrated and amused by our setup - why the steaming hell are there two enormous gringos drinking beers in the middle of the shipping lanes? But what of it, it was Thursday, and it was good.

But well then if you follow this sort of itinerary it will be around about this time that you will come to the grim realisation that you can’t outlast the tide, that you will have to abandon your dreams of a triumphant return abreast the rising water. That the kayak rental man has lied to you, and so on. We had done all we could, paddled far up the river mouth and returned to anchor ourselves with snacks and beers for well over an hour. Now, more than three hours into this expedition, it was clear that we had lost, the high water mark on the palofito stilts was nonexistent, so little had the water risen that it remained several hundred metres short of those bloody stilts. We made the journey back toward land as leisurely as could be managed, paddling only to maintain course and not for propulsion, but no dice, no amount of strategy can make you slower than that hideous tide.

Tragically, numerous Cristals has consequences and they hit me mid-paddle on that drift back. Between interested spectators and my infantile balance skills on the kayak I would hide from weeing off or in the boat and instead find myself with ice-water tenderised feet stalking over a mine field of devilishly sharp mussels in a desperate attempt to find a suitable place to relieve myself, like some sort of deranged flamingo. All the while my brother cackled behind me with as much sympathy as a dictator at a beheading. At least I didn’t cry, I suppose. Yet Jay would soon feel my pain, as that goddamn tide forced us to cart two heavy boats over mussels and urchins and rocks for more or less an eternity, desperately trying to strike a balance between not shredding our feet and moving with as much rapidity as possible. I suppose shoes were a useful invention after all. Jay at least began the trip with slip-slops, although they only made it about halfway through the mussel field before succumbing to the barrage of sharp edges. Well but then, at last, we emerged onto the tar and the sweet relief of a shower. One of those long, hot, steamy, perfect-water-pressure showers when you are cold and wet and dirty and salty and it feels like a gift from Odin himself. That makes you think well if I could just stay here, in this shower, forever, maybe it will all be okay. A complete rejuvination. And then we could take up our spots on the deck of the palofito with a cold beer as the tide actually finally began to show what all the fuss was about. And, by God, you will be hard pressed to find any fault with an evening beer on the deck of a palofito.

Churches

If you’ve heard anything at all about Chiloé before you get there then it was probably something about churches. The story, as I understand it (which I don’t), is that Spanish Jesuits began to pull in to Chiloé in the 17th and 18th century and more or less went berserk, church building-wise. Without crunching the numbers, the greater Castro region must be well up there in the churches per capita standings. Once the Jesuits had got things started, the Franciscans kept it up after they had mostly replaced the Jesuits - ensuring the dream of every Chilote having their own church continued. At least, I presume that was the goal. Unusually for the colonialists however, they decided to listen to the locals when it came to constructing the things. So, instead of insisting on one of those classic stone cathedrals made from rock quarried at some laughably distant location, at the head of a big stone Plaza de Armas, the churches of Chiloé are elegant wooden things made from good old Chilote larch and cypress. A cross pollination of typical European-style ecclesiastical architecture and deep-rooted Chilote know-how. Hence why so many of these bad boys are still standing. Since Jesuits on small Chilean islands - the veritable edge of the empire - lack the diversity in interests one might hope for, there’s well over a 150 of the things. Even for cultural connoisseurs such as my brother and I (we have seen Cats, the musical), that’s maybe too many. Fortunately, the chaps at UNESCO had selected the A-listers already, so we could aim for the top 16.

The best approach in these situations is to plan as little as possible. Take it slow, and whatever you do, don’t start early in the morning. By the time you’ve reached Chiloé you should know that in this part of the world it mostly pays to live by the words of Avon Barksdale: “Be a little slow, be a little late.” Take your time, enjoy a marraqueta and coffee on the deck and admire just how far the water has gone overnight. Of course, it will be raining, and you will be wet, but it helps you get into the right spirit. I don’t think you can really get into the feel and aesthetic if you aren’t some degree of damp. Besides, we live in an era of raincoats.

One advantage of old religious buildings is they tend to be foundational structures in the town layout, so they’re always in a good spot. The main church of Castro is one of those, and to be fair to it’s Jesuit constructors, its a goddamn sight. A giant sort of Gothic cathedral-style building with two spires, enormous for a wooden structure, and custard yellow. One advantage of going wooden is it’s easy to give your churches wicked colour variations. Inside, the ceilings are of the high and vaulted variety, a tremendous windowed dome shining light over the pulpit. It perhaps lacks the grandeur of stony European counterparts, but there’s a ferocious charm to the wood interior, especially the way it lights up with the passing sun.

The church of Castro is but a block from the bus stop, and someone at the church said Dalcahue also had a church, so that’s where we went next. Say what you like about the churches, they get you moving around the small towns around Castro you’d normally leave behind. And, if you’re a purist, the bus is the way to do it. So it went for a while - a bus through the country side (and maybe a ferry), getting off to scope out a church, and then onto the next bus. There’s something of a problem once you move away from the church in Castro, which is that it’s really the most impressive one, and I think the only one with a double spire situation. Most of the rest more or less resemble each other (at least to dingbats like us) - a tall central spire in front above the main door, which normally has a sort of front deck with a few columns spread out across it and then a large, single main room inside once you enter. Some of them are painted with bright colours but most are not. So, once you’ve been to three of these brown bad boys in a row, you start to realise that a lot of the novelty, Chilote church-wise, is in the impressive number of the things and not anything necessarily stupendous about the individual churches. Charming, no doubt, but without any sort of in-your-face grandiosity. The other problem of course, is that on a random Friday morning, in the rain, not all of them are open, which - after a quick admiring glance form the outside - doesn’t leave all that much more to be impressed by. It was thus that two days of rampant church-admiring was reduced to a handful of churches and a couple of ferries in a morning. Jay and I stood in the full wetness of Chiloé, lone visitors contemplating the church of Achao. A large, brown beast at the head of a small plaza, a tall tower atop elegant pillars, looking a little tired after more than 250 years of standing. I could see Jay was flagging after these first few churches, he had the characteristic weak kneed look of someone not fit for all day cultural excursions. Thank goodness I’d got that boat race in. Truth be told, I was flagging too, but I couldn’t let it show, if I couldn’t bask in my accultured superiority than what was this all about? “Let’s at least browse the pews, no?”
Out of the rain and up the stairs we encountered the only other person so far evident in Achao, an old woman taking shelter and checking for news on the churches bulletin board. As it turned out, the door was locked, and the old woman gave a grave shake of the head as if to warn us off the trail. And, well, just like that, the battle for the hearts and minds of two giant South Africans was lost.

Redemption

Well so then what does one do now that they’re not chasing churches anymore? The obvious thing is to start at the port. Achao is, well, very small, so a direct march down across the plaza toward the sea gets you into the mix quickly. A pleasant enough seafront, the fairly typical sort of a small and functional town, with a by now familiar dark sand beach and gentle lapping water and a thin pier jutting out and an array of small vessels and not all that many people. The weather was of the sort that encouraged sheltering, a steady drizzle that can soak you to the bone without any of the fanfare or razzledazzle of a thunderstorm. Most of the buildings seemed to be functional, nothing flamboyant or particularly inviting. It was difficult to see what they were used for, except some kind of port-like activity. You know, stuff that port buildings get used for. Port things. There were still scarcely any people around. At any rate, Jay spotted an open door to a warehouse like building off to the side with a man and a woman enjoying the view. Her face had such an air of kindness, a gentle smile that seemed like it could never be wiped away, that we were already inside the building before we realised that not going in was an option. It turns out that Chiloé is a great place for markets. At least if you have any sort of penchant for the eclectic. And once you start paying attention, you discover they’re everywhere. Chilote markets are small, cosy sort of things, often, like this particular one, without much in the way of advertising on the outside. Especially in off-shoot places like Achao, they don’t have any kind of built-for-tourist flair. Rather, Chilote markets are as they should be - strictly functional. Free from the gimmicky curios and branded T-shirts of your classic tourist arenas. At most, they might have a beanie with ‘Chiloé’ on it or maybe a stray key ring left over from some government tourism initiative or traded with a cousin from the mainland. The gringo who ambles through a shed market in Achao port on a Friday morning is therefore regarded with open curiosity, like a deer who’s shown up at your grandmothers tea party. The first and most obvious thing you find is the only constant of any and all Chilean markets - deadly soft knitwear made from llama/alpaca/guanaco/vicuña wool: gloves, hats, jerseys, ponchos, et al. The softness of these things is unsettling, especially if its vicu&#241a. It’s almost impossible to behave like a normal person around it, the temptation to bury your face in the exquisite delicacy of the wool is almost too much to bear. Alas, I already owned enough of the stuff to account for a whole herd of the poor beasts. Of course, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be a mountain of potatoes in at least one corner. Great mixed sacks of more species of potato than you are comfortable knowing exist. A bizarre exhibition of potato species diversity. At least one table is likely to be dedicated to an odd mixture of farming and fishing tools, only some of which will be new. There’s likely to be vegetables too, but if you get too pushy about those you might be shuffled over to the potato wall for a time out. You’ll probably also find seafood - hanging gardens of smoked mussels or fish or something. And you will almost certainly find bundles of seaweed of some sort - for purposes one can only imagine are related to Chiloé’s reputation for wackiness. Rounding out the edibles will be honey, tubs and tubs of the stuff.

The most important thing to do in any new place is to sample it’s liquor, so the choice of what to buy, in the end, was obvious. Licor de Oro. I’m not really sure how widely people actually drink the stuff, but the reputation of Licor de Oro travels further than Chiloé. It came in an elegant bottle with a nice cork stopper, a deep urine-yellow, a colour that that would make even the most stoic concerned for their hydration status. It’s not a particularly appetising tone but what can you do? The exact alcohol percentage was hard to pin down, but by all accounts Licor de Oro is strong stuff, although you wouldn’t quite know it from the taste. Of course, in Chile strong home-brewed local liquor is obviously insufficient, so the recommendation from friends was to drink it as a mix with whiskey. What’s a liver, after all. Along with the good Licor, we picked up a bottle of what seemed to be its cousin - an awful pink concoction, deathly sweet with the look and taste of being made from melted fizzpops. Not good. But it seemed only right.

There is no doubt that markets make you hungry. It takes a fortified constitution to visit a market without thinking about food more than 60% of the time. Emerging from that shed and standing in the rain, Jay and I formally ended church hunting. It was something of a formality, but our days pretending to be cultured were over. Besides, there’s nothing more urgent than a good lunch. And here lies what is often the real value of pursuing these sorts of cultural activities - it’s not the thing itself (which is often most of the time totally forgettable), but that you end up in places you would never have gone to if it weren’t for said cultural activity. And, often, you find something terrific. Usually food. There’s no way we would have been roaming around that port in Achao without those damned churches. I would never have heard of Achao, and we would have missed out on one of the best meals I’ve ever had. There’s a second truth in there - outside of fine dining type stuff, for the traveler, the best food is normally found in obscure and random places well outside of the tourist beat.
The little restaurant was on the second floor, up a narrow staircase on the outside of a fairly industrial-looking building, almost directly opposite the market. On all three sides facing the sea and port the walls were more or less window from the waist up, which although the Achao port was not exactly a looker, was still somehow comforting. I’ve always loved watching the rain through big windows from a dry and warm interior. It’s such a lovely feeling to transition from the cold and wet to a soft carpeted floor and a toasty wood fire. Stirs the soul, a wood fire. Jay and I weren’t always smart men, but we made a wise decision at that little restaurant above the dock: let the lady in charge choose our meal, and treat ourselves to a lake districts delight: the Kunstmann pitcher. A bunch of German immigration started way back in the 1800’s and has maintained it’s legacy in large parts of Southern Chile, especially around Valdivia where the old Deutsche aesthetic is alive and well, most notably in the architecture. And German names abound. And they brought great beer. Compared to any of the standard Chilean fodder, Kunstmann, brewed just outside Valdivia, is almost transcendent, although some the Austral beers further south run them close. This was good, as my attempted acculturation of my older brother had more or less drained him of his will to talk to me. Half a pitcher of a golden delicious ale, as it turns out, is enough to turn even hostile blood relatives around. It wasn’t long before he was providing a complete taxonomy of creationists at the University of Cape Town circa the early 2010’s.

At any rate, I was ready to declare an early victory, sitting by that fire with my Kunstmann in hand. But it would have been premature, an unforgivable settling, for the meal that that dear lady chose for us was so outrageously good I would dream of it every time I saw a raindrop for about five years. There are only a few meals in my life I have such distinct memories of, and this was right up on top of that particular pile. It was like an act of fate, like I was destined to be in Achao, wet and rigid and tired and hungry, ready to receive the gift a Chilote seafood soup so unfathomably good that you could do nothing but fill the next five minutes smacking your lips and nodding like a lunatic and making sounds that drew concern from neighbouring tables. Incapable of saying anything outside of ‘mmmm’, ‘ooh yes’, ‘oh man that’s good’, ‘by god’ and so on. I still have no idea what on earth that particular bowl of glorious, brothy magnificence was, but it doesn’t matter really. On first appearance, of course, it didn’t appear anything all that impressive. It’s quite difficult to make a brothy concoction look especially incredible, aesthetically speaking. You can spruce it up with some decorations on top and put it in a nice bowl or whatever, but the basic facts are that soups don’t have the flexibility of land based foods when it comes to presentation. They do have the advantage of smells though. Gentle wafty goodness tickling the sense long before the bowl is settled in front of you. It can be difficult to know what to expect with a seafood soup, too. This was different to the behemoth curanto from before, altogether more manageable. One can’t describe the thing to do it justice - so simple is the appearance yet completely, totally, absorbingly delicious. The key, as always in these situations, is in the broth. Whatever those magicians in the kitchen did, they concocted a serious broth, which houses the essence of the meal. The spirit of it. A sort of spicy, garlic-y, tomato-y broth, maybe even a bit of mushroom or some such thing to add a bit of creaminess, and stacked with herbs. Inside, mussels, clams and fish, delicate and soft and packed with the flavour that comes from just the right amount of time stewing in the broth. Just tremendous. I couldn’t be certain, but there was a definite moistness in the eyes of my brother, a certain emotion playing on his face as he slurped and mmm’d his way through the bowl in front of him. At any rate, food and beer had once again beaten a cultural activity. The great quest for the churches of Chiloé had been no success, but what of it, it had led us to Achao and that little restaurant above the port and an unquestionable culinary victory.

Back in Castro, persistent Chilote wetness relented enough to give us a glimpse of a sunset out on the palafito deck, but the mood was sombre. Anxiety squashed down with beer, as Jay quantified a leak in our collective bank accounts. The two of us sat quietly, scribbling out sums in scabby notebooks. Rapid post mortems of what had once been finely tuned budgets. We were deeply out of pocket, basically, and experiencing some A-grade internal strife. Thank god that big old lunch splurge had been so very delicious, or else it would have been an altogether depressing state of affairs. Anyhow, it’s hard to be too down about your prospects with a full stomach and a slow burning sunset at hand. Besides, Jay and I were resourceful sort of chaps.

As it happens, you can get quite far if you only eat pasta with cup-a-soup and pan amasado every night. The real trick is to maximise the days' other meal by waiting until 10h30 to descend on the free hostel breakfast and eat absolutely everything left on the table, safe in the knowledge any other guests have been more proactive and are by now well into their daily activities. Even for 200 kg worth of South Africans, it’s a regime that will keep you in the game, calorically and financially speaking.

Chiloé National Park

There are really two tests for a location - what is it like when you have lots of money, and what is it like when you have none. One day I will know what it is like to test the former, but on this occasion it was let to us to test out Chiloé’s credentials on the latter front. Of course, one can always choose to wallow around in self pity, especially easy when it’s wet outside and there’s a warm fire inside. But Jay and I were men of action, it simply wouldn’t do. This was no time for such cowardice and lethargy. So we took the obvious option and loaded up some beers and some takeaways from breakfast and made for the great and grand Chiloé National Park. For the most part, the national park is mostly weird and disappointing, and there seems to be some kind of Chilote witch spell on the place that causes visitors to become temporarily insane. Well, for us, anyways. There’s not really a great deal to do there, especially under the perpetual threat of imminent wetness. If you speak to the good folks at the reception place, they’ll direct you mostly in one of two ways. First you can go to a sort of boardwalk thing through a bit of forest that takes in some interesting patches of vegetation (the forest parts are cool) and a couple of small lakes which I’m sure had birds or lizards or whatever people find interesting about small lakes, but I don’t remember seeing anything. Fortunately, scattered throughout this board walk thing are the most amazing information boards you will ever see in a supposedly serious place of nature. The numbers are hazy but there were maybe like a dozen of these things, presented like typical information boards you might find at a botanical garden, dishing all the intel on a species or exhibit or whatever. Except these boards carried info on all the totally made up creatures supposedly corresponding to some of the famous Chilote mythology. Of course that could be an interesting thing to do. But the lovely people who put these things together rather chose to present the text in a very matter of fact way, as if these creatures were real and true and alive and waiting round the next bend to wow you with their long necks and huge wings and prickly scales. And the magic was really in the accompanying images, which of course couldn’t be photos like a serious information board, but were instead hideous animated figures seemingly commissioned with the very tail end of the remaining budget and that most closely resembled a three year-olds attempt at drawing the loch ness monster in MS paint. It was all totally bizarre and confusing and you were left asking only why on earth anyone would put these things here, in a national park. The more of these things we saw the more our mood became weird and giggly, like children who have had too much sugar and too little sleep, the signs must be involved in some kind of insanity inducing hypnosis.

Besides the board walk the only real other thing to do is walk down the beach, which in the National Park territory extends like most of the way down the island’s Western coastline. Indeed, when you are broke and have time an exceptionally long walk on the beach seems an especially clever thing to do. The good officers at reception will assure you there are ginormous Elephant seals to be found, if you would only walk like 10 km down the beach. They will tell you the seals are so big and impressive they scarcely seem like real creatures. Only those committed to the long walk can get the reward. Just like the kayak rental man, it turns out they will be selling you dreams, and you will spend all afternoon walking mile after mile down a long and forlorn beach, scattered with washed up sailing and fishing gear and bones and feathers and myriad weird oceanic fodder. And you will walk for so long that you lose belief in the concept of an Elephant seal at all, and as your temporary insanity deepens you spend more or less the whole time debating your delusional brother who like a total buffoon can’t see how he has been duped by the CONAF rangers, still innocently believing Elephant seals are real like those green and red monsters on the board walk were real. Your rapidly increasing caloric deficits will of course render your debates increasingly silly and insipid and childish, but you keep on walking. Eventually, after an eternity of empty walking, you will give up on the dream of ever finding a mythical Elephant seal, and turn around. But your brother will then decide that he is a rapper named ‘Wild Card’ who raps about environmental causes that will see you cycle through crazed phases of supporting him as a young MC named ‘Penguin Boy’, before imploring him to shut up and bitterly lamenting your status as blood relatives, dragging tired legs back over the last few kms to the salvation of the bus stop where Chilote locals can save you through the lingering threat of public humiliation. All of this in a days work for Chiloé National Park. You would have to say it’s not the most impressive National Park in the world, and it’s disappointing they would lie so baldly about the existence of Elephant seals, but I suppose any place you can clock 25 km down the beach and get a taste of the most ridiculous information boards ever printed must certainly pass the test of a good thing to do when your travel budget has been so decimated you’ve given up on lunch.

Well, then, that would more or less be that. Another night of pasta and cup-a-soup, washed down with the awful pink stuff from the market. We would leave Chiloé the next morning at 05h00 en route to big bad Argentina. And what a grotesquely charming place it had been, the witches and monsters hadn’t materialised but the Jesuits and churches were real, and it all fit together quite nicely. It won’t blow your socks off, but you can certainly settle into it.