Chilly Chiloe to Chaitén

So I went to the special southern island of Chiloe (Chile), which is supposed to be "remarkably different" from the rest of the country. Now, if this were from the guide book once again, I wouldn't really be surprised to find that this is untrue. However, everywhere I met Chileans, they confirmed this, usually be pointing out that `si no has visto a Chiloe, no fuiste en Chile´ (if you haven't seen chiloe, you haven't been to Chile). Well, you know what.... it's just like the rest of Chile. Really no big difference from the other parts of the country, except that it rains more than elsewhere.

However, Chiloe wasn't all bad. For one thing, I ran into Ed - a real cool English cat I met in Pucón - on the street. We laughed ourselves stupid when we realized later that night that we'd just bought a bottle of Pisco and two liters of Coke for 3 quid, then engaged in some excellent conversation while the owner of my hostel kept referring to us as her hijos (sons).

I also went camping on the beach of Parque Nacional Chiloe. It rained intermittently all night (in fact, it seemed to rain every two hours 24 hours a day there) and camped in some massive sand dunes near a huge beach. I thought it was freezing cold, but someone else I was travelling with decided to go swimming, and by swimming I mean dip in the freezing water. It generally was quite cool/cold in Chiloe, I might add, and once I get all my photos and videos posted, you'll all see what I mean.

Eventually, I decided to head towards the Carretera Austral. The C.A. has to be pretty unique in the world. It's a 1200 km road - mostly dirt and gravel - that runs South from Puerto Montt to Villa O'Higgins. Throughout the journey, the road winds through ageless temperate rainforests and beteen huge glaciers, and even during summer months can become impassable due to it's high rainfall. As the military museum at Chaitén regarding this massive undertaking points out, there really wasn't much economic justification for the decades and dollars spent on the project - it pretty much was just something Pinochet really wanted to do. And as dictators are wanton to do, he did.

In order to get to Chaitén, I took a ferry from Chaiten. now, ever since I had started travelling with Breanne a week earlier, she had been a big proponent of going to see penguins. I've already had massive penguin exposure in Ushuia, the pictures from which should be up on facebook. Anyway, I wasn't really that keen on the feathery little fellows, so I maged to defer any specific trips to see them. However, sitting on the ferry, talking to this German guy I'd met at the hostel the night before, I looked over the side of the ship and casualy asked "aren't those penguins?" And indeed, in those lattitudes penguins simply raom around, trying to find some grub. Anyway, we both started getting up so we'd have a better look when this little Chilean girl figuered out what we were talking about. She thus started a full sprint towards the side of the ship. While this may not sound alarming, I'd like to point out at this point that the ship lacked true railings - all they had were two thin chains, with plenty of space for a little child to slip through and fall into the cold, cold water. Luckily, her father intercepted her before anything happened, and she certainly enjoyed the sight of the penguins - I think she was still laughing and shrieking a full 30 minutes after we saw the last of them. I, in the mean time, vowed to keep all comments about so-called "adorible animals" to a minimum from then on.