Another bus trip later we arrived on the island of
Chiloe. This place is regarded as a backward kind of place by the
cosmopolitan Santiagans, but it has retained much of its traditional
lifestyle and customs. Fishermans houses are still built on stilts on the
waterline, so they can tie up their boats at the back door. These wooden terraces
in stilts in the water are called ??????? This place also had lots of
brightly coloured houses. We stayed the night in a bright yellow
residencial (B+B) which we thoiught was cool. There was a little incident
with a nuutter who wanted to eat with us, but that didn't spoil our
enjoyment of the excellent and very cheap seafood the area is famous for.
At the port of Quellon, we boarded the Navimag ferry for
a tree day, two night "cruise" through the fjords of Chile's south central
coastline. We were going to take the longer ferry all the way down to
Puerto natales but it was full. As it turned out this was a better plan,
as three nights sleeping on the floor (once actually out on deck!) might
have been a bit much. This boat turned out to be the local ferry service,
and was much less touristy than the longer boat. As a result we got to stop
off in the most bizzare isolated little places and see the locals up to
their daily doings. We often stopped at places with no pier, so the ferry
would either pitch up onto the beech and drop the door onto the sand, or
just drop anchor and let them come to the open door (still don't
understand why we didn't sink!?) in little yellow fishing boats while we
were still in deep water. We got off a few tims for a stroll on teh beech
or through a little village. It was pretty clear that the locals relied on
this ferry as their primary (if not only) method of communication and
transport to the rest of the country. There aren't many roads in this part
of the world! Too many fjords! Each time we stopped there would be hours of
waiting about as people, trucks, shellfish and other goods were loaded and
unloaded. We slipded into some sort of weird ferry time, where whenever
the crew told you we would arrive or depart some place, you had to add on
at least 8 hours. Amongst alot of miserable weather and clouds, we saw
penguins and porpoises, millions of islands, fjords and waterfalls, and met
a a couple of dodgy german bikers, a stereotypically nice dutch couple,
and mad bloke who had been travelling for 40 years, an Irishman who had
left his job at the bank to messa bout in south america for a bit, and a
group of students from Santiago who were going to teach the locals in
isolated communities how to maintain their soil using composting
instead of the slash and burn destrot all the forest method. These kids
were a good laugh and we had a few lagers with them to keep out the cold.
Their english was markedly better than our (or rahter Suzie's) spanish.
The pictures of the little yellow boats are those guys being whisked off to
the little village they were staying at. Suzie and I wondered if they
would ever make it back, as it looked like th most isolated place in the
world. Really a very long way from civilisation indeed! They might still be
there as I havent has a reply from Maurice yet!
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