[Chile] best emails ever

[I wrote this on November 30th, and for some reason didn't publish it.]

More awesome messages from my friend at school that I feel compelled to share:

If I understand right, you're in Chiloé, and I'm envious. I imagine you are eating every strange thing they give you, and taking photos like a delinquent.

Since Christmas is coming, I would like a gift from there, but something specific. It could be a freshly made curanto [seafood stew], but as it would arrive cold, it's better that I ask for the following. Go get a pen and paper, it's detailed.

[instructions for the vegetable-dyed wool yarn I'm supposed to find]

I want to make myself a scarf or necklace of wool, and your support of my cause would be an act of mercy in my life. Here's a link so you know what yarn looks like and you don't bring me a sheep: http://lamagiadechiloe.blogspot.com/2008/05/lana-teida-con-vegetales.html

If you can't buy the yarn, you can leave me 5 dollars to buy my Christmas present.

I sincerely hope you're having fun in the South of my daydreams. Enjoy it for me, and post lots of photos.

I don't miss you and it's good that you're gone, and your profile photo is horrible.

And then today, in response to this photo:

I saw the photos, and your "mystery plant" is called nalca, and it grows in damp places. On my family's land, it grows by the shore of the lake, and has a taste like an acidic apple, and they make chicha [a sweet alcoholic beverage] from it. (Don't drink chicha down South there, you won't remember your name, or you might think you're kissing the pincoya [Chilote female water spirit] when it's actually a sheep.) The plant is good for salad, or to eat solo with salt if you're really, really hungry.

Please keep publishing photos, and I will be a tourist from my chair.

The mystery plant is Chilean rhubarb, Gunnera tinctoria (unrelated to real rhubarb).

I do have good friends.

Puerto Varas rundown

Puerto Varas is a resort-y town on Lake Llanquihue. It appears to be full of French people, both tourists and expats (both hostels I stayed at are owned and/or mostly staffed with French people). It's heavily touristed, and from the way everything is called "[thing] Patagonia," it looks like it's a jumping-off point for trips to Patagonia. The lake is beautiful, and when the clouds clear (1 day of my 5 here) there are a couple lovely volcanoes standing watch.

The Lonely Planet book contains many lies: most of the listed restaurants are gone, specifically Sirocco, Govinda, Imperial 605, and Sushi Varas.

Lodging:

• Hostel Melmac - Nice place, clean, comfy beds, CH$8000 for the dorm; no breakfast. It's across the street from a nightclub, which wasn't awful but could be quieter. Big kitchen, but there's only one inaccessible power outlet in the dorm, and not really any couch-enabled common space, just the office and the dining area.
• Casa Margouya - I was here for one night. It's CH$9500, which includes a nice breakfast. The space is smaller, but there's a comfy common area with chairs (although one chair is usually taken up by Nutria the dog).

Food:

• Café El Barrista - I spent at least half of each day here. It's a North American-style coffee shop with excellent espresso, desserts, and lunches, with wireless and plenty of power outlets. I didn't bother trying the other café in town, because really, why bother?
• Cafe Dane's - This has a great reputation, and it's quite good, but it's a standard Chilean salon de té, serving the same stuff as every other such place in Chile. Depends on whether you want to eat typical Chilean food or not.
• El Gordito - It's Chilean, but outstanding. I had the garlic salmon (salmon al pilpil), which, ignoring the warnings not to eat salmon in Chile (farmed, antibiotics, etc.), was delicious and garlicky. The congrio andaluza, conger eel with crab sauce, was possibly even better.
• Pim's Express - Good, proper pizza! The full Pim's is an appealing pub on the water, carrying two of the local beers: the lager isn't very good, and the Marzen is good if you like Marzen (I don't). If you try the two local beers, don't like them, and order a Kunstmann Torobayo instead, be prepared for the disdain of the waitress.
• Parentesis - I only had a bite of someone else's pizza, but it was conspicuously better than Pim's (which makes it very, very good by food-snob standards).
• Mediterraneo - The service was slow and annoying--the clientele was gringo tourists, so I can appreciate where the staff would hate their life--but the vegetarian lasagna was top-notch. They served it in a bowl so it could be properly soaked in its tomato-cream sauce.
• Vicki Johnson Chocolates - Excellent truffles. Nothing's cheap, but I'd wager it's all worthwhile.

Doing Stuff:

• Honestly? I didn't do anything. Not exaggerating at all. I was here for 5 days and didn't leave Puerto Varas. I broke up my stretches hanging out at Café El Barrista and the hostel with visits to restaurants and short walks around downtown. If you want, though, there's volcanoes, waterfalls somewhere, kayaking, trekking, etc.

Overall? I'm glad to hang out someplace with good coffee and chocolate, but eating non-Chilean here is a bit more expensive than Chiloé, and the surroundings are not as pretty or interesting. I'm glad to have stopped here, but on a future trip I'll probably plan more time in Chiloé.

Chiloé: Ancud rundown

It's a small town, but we'll see what we can do.

You might want to avoid using Buses Queilen: they use their own terminal about 1.5km from the town center, and I didn't enjoy the walk with all my stuff. Plenty of other companies use the municipal terminal, a warehouse that's not in the middle of nowhere, or take Cruz del Sur. Or there are taxis, probably for about US$2.

I'm staying at Hostal Lluhay, which is a low-cost place for grown-ups: every day they come clean your room, make the bed, and leave you new towels (some days scratchier than others). Breakfast is fine, but the "kuchen," at least this week, has a top layer of Jell-O. (Kuchen is normally a German-originated fruit crumble dessert.) But here's the view from the common/dining room:

It's also a couple blocks from the town center, and the dining room has a very nice fireplace that eventually gives off heat.

Curanto is pitched as the culinary awesomeness of Chiloé. I've had curanto and its slightly smaller sibling pulmay (back at Sacho in Castro), and while I don't want to be jaded and negative, it's basically a clambake, but not as good. The shellfish, especially the clams, are full of sand, which I guess means they don't clean them (by leaving them alive in clean, sand-free water for a while). The sausage, chicken, and pork end up steamed, which gives them a weird texture and flavor. The broth was mediocre-to-tasty. Feel free to try it as a cultural experiment; I think it's vastly over-hyped, but I'm a food snob with a lot of seafood experience.

Food:

• Retro's Pub - Probably the winner, given I'm avoiding Chilean food. Excellent service, good-enough nachos (made with Doritos, so don't expect them to satisfy a purist)`, excellent burgers (if slightly awkward at 6-7 inches wide).
• Kuranton - Where I had the curanto. Meh.
• La Botica de Café - Chilean-style sad espresso and no wifi, but it's smoke-free and pleasant, with excellent desserts. Ordering a ristretto gets you good espresso.
• El Embrujo de Chiloé - I asked them to run the espresso machine for 30 seconds and they still failed. Ordering a ristretto was much better. Wireless, and nice people.
• DH Pub - Hiding up Pudeto a few blocks from the center. They have Chilote beer, which isn't good (at least the lager/blonde), but they made a mighty whiskey sour and it came with some kind of fried-dough snackies with spicy cheese.

Stuff To Do:

• Pingüinera Puñihuil - Penguins! Humboldt and Magellanic. Pictures here. It's a 3-4-hour jaunt unless you take the Mar Brava bus from their garage on Calle Anibal Pinto, which will leave you waiting on the beach for a couple hours. (I hitched a ride back with a private group.) If you've got an extra US$15 it might be worth a tour group, which will include other stuff; otherwise, take the bus or a taxi to the beach yourself and arrange with one of the two of three companies that actually take you out on the boat. Penguin verdict: cute and worthwhile, in beautiful secluded scenery.

It's a nice little town. I'm skipping the trip to Quemchi, which I'm fine with, since I was only going to a Chilote restaurant there. Ancud is an adorable little town, and for Chiloé in general, I could easily spend another week or more traveling around to different towns and islands.

Ancud, Chiloé

Pictures are uploading: the internet here doesn't reach into my room, and I've been busy out and about. There's also a lack of internet-capable places in town, which is charmingly small-town. Especially funny since there appears to be municipal wi-fi, which I think confuses my computer because of how many networks there are.

Yesterday I had lunch with Corrie and her parents in Castro, then meandered over to Ancud. I'd thought about a trip back to Castro, but it's kind of a crappy road, so...no. Onward!

Ancud is a cute little town. I saw penguins today! Cute ones, hanging out on rocks, doing penguin things, off a secluded beach.

I spent a chunk of today chewing on an email from an old friend, who is sort of an old acquaintance at this point, since they don't respond to any of my attempts to keep in touch. That touches some unpleasant patterns in our history together, so I've been sorting out what I need in order for a friendship to feel alive and vital, and how reasonable I'm being in finally reaching a breaking point. It's a lot more fun to daydream about going home, but since it's here, I have to engage with it and feel my way forward.

Tomorrow will be 11 days until I'm back home with the girl and the kid. Hard to believe I'm traveling another week. I think I've been working too hard, and tomorrow maybe I won't do much of anything.

Chiloé: Castro rundown

I'm staying at Hospedaje Mirador, which is run by very nice people, has clean and comfy rooms and bathrooms (the rooms are tight, but whatever), and a solid breakfast. (Meat! And cheese! And whole wheat bread! What a concept.) It will have been 3 very nice nights, at $8000 (I think) for a room with two single beds.

I've basically been following tips from the Lonely Planet book. My main goal in my traveling is to avoid normal Chilean food: if I have to eat an empanada, charquican, carbonada, mashed potatoes with a fried egg on top, or any of the standard sandwiches, I'm doing it wrong. If I were to plan so poorly that I had to eat a completo (boiled hot dog with 5mm layers each of tomato, avocado, and mayonnaise), I should just give up and go home early. Probably I would rather go hungry.

The restaurant Años Luz listed in the book closed down a couple years ago.

Food:

• La Brújula del Cuerpo - Perilously close to normal Chilean food. I had a pizza, which was a big white bread with pizza stuff on top and a sauce that looked but did not taste suspiciously ketchup-y. Nothing else was open on Sunday night.
• Sacho - An excellent Chilote place. I had the pulmay, which was delicious, although the clams were sandy and the giant mussels turn out to be a food I'm reluctant to try, so I stuck to the regular mussels and was very happy.
• Restaurant Mar y Velas - This is actually out in Achao. I had a most excellent grilled conger eel with butter, simple and awesome.
• Don Octavio - Oh man. The "Octavio" style is your choice of fish smothered in onions/tomato/bell pepper/little bit of sausage, covered in a pile of mostly-crisp fried potatoes. It's Chilean, but...delicious? and flavorful? I'm confused. Go eat here.
• Kaweshkar - Actually a low-budget but stylish nightclub, they're open starting at noon serving drinks and food. I had a wonderful, deliciously non-Chilean real crepe with lightly sauteed vegetables and a light béchamel sauce, served with a little dish of ground smoked hot pepper (merkén) so I could season it to taste.
• Ristretto Caffe - On Blanco near the plaza, this may be the only coffee shop per se in town. Comfy tables, wifi, no power outlets. It's smoky when it's full, but the coffee doesn't suck.

Overall, it's been a solid food trip. Downtown Castro is cute and located on a small peninsula, so you can just walk 10 minutes in any of 3 directions to get a different view of the water.

Stuff To Do:

• Dalcahue - Pronounced "dal-KAH-way," this is a cute little town. I went for the artisans' market, which is smaller on a non-Sunday; I basically went, bought some naturally-dyed yarn for a friend (which I probably could have bought in Castro), took a bunch of pictures, and came back. But that was nice to do.
• Achao - Past Dalcahue on Isla Quinchao, this place is cute and has Restaurant Mar y Velas. Pictures here.

That's...actually all I did. I'm on vacation, and it's a nice place to be. Tomorrow I'm off to Ancud, where I have more ambitious plans involving penguins and a restaurant 90 minutes away.

field trip to Achao

Today I'm theoretically going to go eat lunch at a restaurant in Quemchi, but it's almost 10:30 and I haven't even showered yet. Instead, I'll show you pictures of Achao, on the nearby island of Quinchao. (Chilote names are great. I'm going to Ancud tomorrow, and then back here to Castro [not a Chilote name] so I can visit Dalcahue and possibly Isla Mechuque.)

I'm not the world's best photographer, but there were some really nice shots around town. This one in particular gives the illusion I know what I'm doing.





In the most un-Chilean thing I've seen since Anna and I had chicken korma in Valparaiso, Achao has a working and quite beautiful little public library.

I'm sure there's a great story behind why this dinky village in southern Chile has a working library and Valparaiso, seat of the Chilean Congress, doesn't. (Technically it has one, the Biblioteca Santiago Severin, but it's been closed since the earthquake and shows no sign of reopening.)

The kids' section:

This is just from the bus ride back to Castro. This kind of scene just crops up everywhere. This is what Chiloe looks like.

Click on any of the photos to get to Flickr, or see them all in the Chiloe set.

Like Valdivia and La Serena, Chiloe is also very clean, which makes me think that Region V, and Valparaiso in particular, just doesn't care. In other words, I used to think that sidewalks covered in dog crap represented Chilean culture not valuing clean sidewalks. After a bit of traveling, I now think that in Valparaiso there's a cultural value on having the place look charmingly run-down, and disgustingly filthy.

Castro, Chiloé

Whew! It's been a whirlwind week: 7 days ago I was still in La Serena. Then a few days in Santiago for WorldTeach and English Opens Doors end-of-service stuff, and now I'm in Chiloé, an archipelago in Region X. It's pretty far south, and yet there's probably still about a third of the country left before you hit Antarctica. Chile is cartoonishly long for how skinny it is.

To save myself 15 hours one-way on the bus, I flew from Santiago to Puerto Montt before going 4.5 hours on the bus to Castro, the main city on Chiloé. The flight was completely worth it, because hours on a bus, or even worse on a plane, screw my body up for days afterward. Much nicer this way.

Chiloé is pretty amazing. You could put a picture in the dictionary next to "idyllic." The traditional houses look like this, with various shapes of shingles on the side:



Chiloé is known for having maintained its distinct culture over the centuries. It's still Chile, though, as I was greeted by the surreal spectacle of the local fire company scrubbing the facade of the church:

Today I went out to the town of Achao on Isla Quinchao, a long island right next to Castro. Photos aren't up yet, but they'll be here with the rest of them.

15 days until I'm home!