From the ferry ride we got straight on a bus and headed over to the Chiloe, a small island just off the mainland about 2 hours from Puerto Montt. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon in the town of Ancud and was greeted by a town of drunks, every street corner or doorway seemed to have a fisherman slumped in it with beer cans scattered around him! Hmmm could be an interested place to spend a few days! The following day we hired bikes and headed out along the coast for a small bike ride, around 5 hours later having avoided dogs who like to chase bikes, cows the size of rhino's, vultures gathering for lunch and hungover fisherman in cars we arrived back in town just in time as Shona's bike decided to give up the ghost about a mile from town! We'd decided to spend the next few days trekking, bus’ing and hitching our way around some of the island, no real plan just see where we end up…so with small back packs and a tent we headed out of Ancud and towards a national park where if mythology is to be believed girls come out of the woods impregnated by a small troll – now I know I'm getting hairy but that’s a little harsh!! We trekked into the park for a couple of hours, which is set right on the coast line so the sound of the Pacific pounding the shores echoed round and was fantastic. Finally stumbled across a house set in the forest around 5pm and just as the sun was going down and asked the owner (a very small and very old lady) if we could camp in her garden, moments later she's breaking branches with her bare hands and lifting benches to help us set up a little camp and dinner area… bless her, although she was only tiny and a little troll-like hmmm perhaps mummy troll?! I better keep an eye out for randy male trolls!! Woke up bright, cold and early to the sound of a boar foraging outside our tent, had brekkie (no not wild boar sausages) and headed off again. Walked along the beach for a few hours, accompanied by a dog we managed to gain that wouldn’t leave our sides, until we reached a small town. With no sign of any buses we just carried on walking! About 3 hours later and still with the dog in tow we managed to hitch a ride off a minibus full of very bemused and giggling road maintenance workers who had just finished their shift – think they found us foreigners quite amusing! Got dropped off a short bus ride away from Castro, the main town on the island, so decided to stay there for the night. Having checked out the town and its strange brightly painted houses built on stilts in the water we then headed over to one of the small islands just off of Chiloe’s coast and carried on trekking and hitching our way around. Stopped and had lunch on the beach before visiting a couple of wooden churches (something that these islands are famous for) until finally catching a bus in the evening back to the drunks in Ancud…. oh and thankfully Shona isn’t expecting any little trolls just yet!
Wanderlust for Life
Adventure travel around the world