Chiloe National Park

Monday 23rd November 2015

I woke up in the morning feeling crap and went out after brekky to buy some more medication at the pharmacy. I got some extra strong flu powder drinks to drink twice a day and another one to drink just before to go to bed.

It was a gorgeous day and the pharmacy was right next to Castro church so I decided to check it out.

Inside the church

Cool statue of the dragon

Walking back, a street of Castro

Dogs sunbathing, next to a nice tag

Then I spent the day doing nothing apart from writing a bit offline, sorting out a few photos and mostly sleeping all day, while drinking ginger lemon and honey tea from time to time, trying to fight out this bloody flu which had just got into my boddy and was putting me completely flat out. So annoying!!!

In the evening, Fredrik, the Swedish traveller met in the free walking tour in Mendoza and seen again in the bus from Valparaiso to Pucon, arrived in Castro. He had just spent 2 weeks volonteering on a farm next to Puerto Montt. It was cool to catch-up on the various stuff we had seen and done. He also told me about Chaiten where he wanted to go to next. First, I had thought about going to Puerto Chacabuco but what he told me about Chaiten and the Pumalin National Park and the great rafting of Futaleufu were enticing and I started considering the idea of actually going there instead. I had opened the map of Patagonia my parents had given me in Santiago just before to head back to France, and pinned it on the wall. I really cherish those moments in time where you are already far, far away on the other side of the world and you look at a map and everything is possible. It is so exciting to not plan, and to be able to change your mind while travelling based on the signs you encounter, based on what other travellers tell you about, based on your guts feeling, based on what you like. Having this incredible flexibility is the utermost freedom of the traveller and makes travelling really exciting.

Fredrik pointing to Puerto Chacabuco while we are debating options. Chaiten is located right in front of Quellon, the Southern tip of Chiloe.

Fredrik had met in hostel in Ancud a guy from Serbia living in the States who joined us for dinner. We met a cool British couple having
dinner in the hostel at the same time as us, Aleyna and Niels. They were from England, working in the wine industry and had just spent a
year in New Zealand where Aleyna had found a job in a wine business company helping to classify all the various bottle of wines for online selling. They kept travelling and she was working 10-20 hours a week as a digital nomad for that company, still doing some online classification of those wine bottles. I thought that was so cool. Another digital nomad,
like the French guy I had seen in Mendoza!!

I went to bed pretty early, tired!

Tuesday 24th November 2015
I was feeling a little bit better and decided it was good enough to join Fredrik, the Serbian guy whose name I forgot and Niels to Chiloe National Park. Aleyna decided to take the day to work from there. We took off after brekky and walked to the local bus station. I went to the first agency we saw which was selling bus tickets to the park.

It was 10.50am and they told me that the next bus was at 11.30am only. Lluis had told us there was one every hour on the hour so I asked them but they said no. Luckily Fredrik went to ask another one meanwhile and told me “Hey, that one over there goes at 11am!” It was the same thing happening again as when I had arrived in Chimbote in Peru and had asked if there was no bus leaving earlier and the company had said “No,no” but actually there was one…from another company!
Here is the other agency where we bought the tickets to leave at 11am.

The bus

Here is a map of the bus journey from Castro to Cucao, the entrance to Chiloe National Park.

Leaving Castro and its palafitos.

View from the bus

A church we passed in a village

Most of the bus ride, the road was right next to the water

Another shot

Off to the Chiloe National Park

We registered at the entrance and then started to walk to a mirador

View from the mirador

Another view to the right

Walking on the muddy path between the roots

And then on the platform

We saw a local jaguar on a hunt. Very scary.

Plants

Continuing to walk.

The plants around us.

Insect
Spider web

We got out of that first walk and arrived on a big road on which we walked to get to another path leading to the sea.

Here are more photos of our walk in Chiloe National Park. Click on one photo and scroll to see all of them.

After our walk we stopped in this place and had a coffee

Then we took the bus back.

View from the bus

In Castro, I bought for the second time a portable charger for my smartphone as the smartphone battery was not lasting long and the first portable battery I had bought in Valparaiso had already died.

The we chilled at the hostel for a bit and with Aleyna, the four of us went to a restaurant on the sea front to have a curanto, the typical dish from Chiloe. Arriving at the sea front.

The moon was already full again.

Old locomotive.