Far Away in Chiloe

Chiloe is the second largest island in South America, Tierra del Fuego being the largest. It is a truely unique and special place being a stronghold of traditional Chilean culture and rural life. We rented a palifitto, a house on stilts of the type that once lined the coasts of Chile's fishing communities. Over time, athquakes and tsunamis have destroyed most of the palafittos but Castro sits in a protected fjord on the east side of the island so some of the palafittos have stood the trevails of time. "Mi Palafitto" was restored and fixed up by Sophia, a Chilean doctor living in Castro. She helped us get settled in and oriented and we spent ten dqys exploring the many wonderful aspects of Chiloe including it's old wooden churches, 16 of which are USESCO woeld heritage sites, and summer cultural festivals where we enjoyed traditional music and dance, food and fun. We walked beautiful beaches, kayaked in the fjord,  and on a few of the clearer days we could see the cordillera de los Andes accross the straights on the mainland, including the actively erupting volcano which recently forced the evacuation of the small city of Chiaten. Before we left Chiloe we visited a nesting colonly of Magellic and Humbolt penguins. Lily's favorite part of Chiloe was the old church at Colo, the huge artisan market in Castro, watching the tide come in and out from Mi Palifitto and the black nedked swans that hung out in the tidal flats. Miles favorite things about Chiloe was the design of Mi Palafitto, seeing the penguin colony and searching out the old churches in the remote corners of the island. Jim's favorite things were seeing the old ways still so alive and how they do eveything, literally everything, out of wood, and the music. Tracie enjoyed reading Darwin's writings about visting Chiloe on the voyage of the Beagle and thinking about what had changed and what hadn't since his time, seeing the Andes across the Gulf of Ancud and the brightly painted houses and boats that brightened even the greyest days. We took away many great memories along with our handmade warm wool sweaters and hats. Chiloe was avery special place. From here we head intto the Andes mountains and Argentina. 

Super Cama to Valdivia

We bid farewell to Casa Kryenberg, Lucia and Juan Pablo and the city of Valpariaso and boarded the bus for the 11 hour journey south to Valdivia. The bus system in Chile is amazing to us Norte Americanos. You can catch buses of all shapes and sizes to nearly anywhere very convienently and cheaply. For our long trip south we choose the overnight "super cama" bus with the cush sleeper seats. Miles has become the supreme travel researcher in matters of transportation gaining expertise all of Chile's major bus companies, their fleets and routes. Chile being such a large country and distances between regions so vast that 12-22 hour trips are commonplace. We boarded the bus at 10pm in Santiago and arrived in Valdivia, considered to be in the northernmost portion of Patagonia, around 9am. Valdivia is a beautiful small city that lies at the convergence of three large rivers. Extensive wetlands were created as a result of the 1960 earthquake, largest quake ever recorded on the planet we're told at magnitude 9.5, which resulted in a huge tsunami that hit most of southern Chile. Valdivia is famous for it's fish market. We stayed in a cabana in the nearby small village of Niebla on the outer coast where we visited the ruins of two of the 16 Spanish forts that formed the last stronghold of the Spaniards on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The Chileans defeated the Spaniards here in one of the final battles for independence. We were able to see a reinactment of the battle for Fuerte Coral which ended with the raising of the Chilean flag. There was also a folk festival taking place in Niebla while we were there where we were able to see music and dancing while the sun set over the beautiful estuary. Our stay in our cabana in Niebla was short as our destination was further south to the island of Chiloe. Yes, it resembled home here in many ways yet oh so different. 

Valpariaso: City of Artists and Acensors

We fell under the spell of Valpariaso. All four of us. After 5 days spent exploring the winding alleys of the Cerros Allegre and Concepcion, watching the busy port and visiting the small towns and beaches to the north and the south, wandering through museums and artisan shops and feeling the history around us we were smitten. How quickly we forgot that the old buildings were worse for wear, that we are not really "city" people and that our Spanish learned from travels in Mexico and Central America does not for some reason seem to help us understand much in Chilean Spanish. Was it our perch on Cerro Allegre where we stayed with a painter who taught classes in the dining room and sold paintings from the garage and from where we watched the lights of the city appear each night and reflect the sky filled with stars? Was it observing the historic port where ships bound for Rapa Nui (Easter Island) mingled with ships readying for or fresh from rounding the horn and an occasional cruise ship bound for Anarctica while the Chilean navy stood guard? Was it visiting Pablo Neruda's "house in the sky"? Or was it the seemingly irrepressible artistic urge, a gallery behind every garage, a mural on every wall and graffitti literally everywhere? Or maybe it was the acensors, ancient lifts that carry you up the 14 mountainsides that make up the city, each one unique in it's design? No, I think what really sealed the deal was the dinner at J Cruz Verde. A little back alley restaurant that looked as dubious as you could imagine but upon entry was the most amazing hodge podge of visual imagary and Chilean hospitality where we were serenaded by the owner and his guitar while we feasted on the beef pobre---ooh la la!----and got to add our own graffitti to that covering the walls and the tables. That was the meal when we felt we had become part of the place and it a part of us as we all agreed we love this city because it has so much character. Gritty and real, old and wonderful there is nowhere else in the world you could imagine to be quite like Valpariaso!

Plaza de Armas, Santiago

Cerro Santa Lucia

An Oasis of calm in the city of 6 million (of 16 million in Chile). Cerro Santa Lucia was a "barren" rock outcrop that was ignored in teh center of Santiago for centuries. The base of this hill was the site of Pedro Valdivia's officially declaring Ssntiago a town in 1541.

Cerro Santa Lucia sat ignored until 1872 when the mayor, in a well established colonial Spanish-style act, set 150 prisoners to work transforming it with plantings and major landscaping.

The Capitol of Chile

Santiago is a city surrounded by the Andes Mountains, containing about a third of Chile’s population with a huge five million people, it is a very big city.
The center of Santiago is mostly all historical buildings built around the 18th & 19th century, the Vegas hotel witch our family stayed at was located in this part of town (photo). Tough it was only about a block away from the main street it was in a very quiet neighborhood.

Santiago is a very pedestrian friendly city. I would say that it is a cross between Las Angles & Paris. It is clean, has nice sidewalks and has allot of pedestrian walkways. These are big roads reserved for pedestrians only.

In Santiago all of the people are very friendly even though their spanish is a little hard to understand. For example on our first day in Chile an old man stopped us and told us that we should put sunscreen on so we would not get skin cancer, so we walked rite into a pharmacy and bought some.

In Santiago there are lots of old sculptures, fountains, parks and plazas. Some of these parks are on hills or Cerros. Since some of the hills in and around Santiago there are these lifts called Funiculars. They are set on a slant and they have multiple cars.

After spending 6 days in Santiago we caught one of the comfortable buses out to a town called Valpariso. More on that soon!

Posted by Lily Johannessen

In Chile Now!

We did make it down to Chile--arrived late on Jan 18.

Been seeing Santiago and Valparaiso since then, and as I had to send my fancy new laptop back to the USA for repair (3.4 lb Samsung, failed LCD screen), we could not get photos off the camera. But tech stores do exist down here and we are back up to speed w photos, if not my work laptop.

Four nights in Santiago and now most of a week in Valparaiso--great places. The port city here that seemed very seedy to our quick-to-judge son has now turned into a place of great interest and charm (that ¨chipped paint charm¨ as the Rough Guide puts it) with wild hilly geography, art almost everywhere, and ships coming and going in the bay.

More on that later..