Castro

Day 79 – Room with a view

Needless to say, we slept like logs last night.  On the way to the bus station, we picked up a couple of random empanadas (mine being meat, which I hate and Matt’s being apple which he hates – so we swapped!) and managed to snag the 12 noon bus just as it was about to pull out of the bus station at 12.05 – the driver making a joke that he was waiting for us!

An hour or so later we were in Castro and in a very clean and comfy room in Hostel Cordillera with a view out over Fiordo de Castro.

The view from our room.

We took a walk around town and unsuccessfully looked for a hairdresser to deal with Matt’s locks and cave man beard, dropped off some washing, picked up a box at the post off to send home some presents and things and had a beer/coffee in the old fire station that had been converted into an American style diner. 

That night was a quiet one, eating in, Skyping our parents and catching up on some “Mad Men”.

Day 80 -   Crazy dogs, stilts, clams, hedgehogs and big mussels.

The Lonely Planet guide said that the Museo de Arte Moderno de Chiloe was a short 1km stroll out of town down Galvarino Riverros street.  What seemed like about 2km later, we stopped in at a kiosk to ask if we were lost.  The answer was no, but we still had at least 1200m to go!  It was spitting with rain and we didn’t have any coats, but we decided to push on anyways.  Right out of town, off the paved road, past some housing development and up a muddy slope, the museum was set on top of a hill with a view back over Castro and the valley before it.  Matt had to clean himself off before we went inside (some kind idiot had driven past us too fast on the muddy slope and splashed mud down Matt’s leg) and the place was completely deserted!  The shingled building itself was more interesting than the art, but still worth the walk up the hill.

  
A field of flowers from far away.

But up close they were clocks!

 
Insane graffiti on the walls and paper mache dogs with crazy personalities – there was princess dog, army dog, mardi gras dog, nature dog, political slogan dog…

   
Trudging back down the hill with community housing development as far as the eye could see.

After some leftovers for lunch we headed back out to have a look at some palafitos from the Puente Gamboa Mirandor which is a lookout over a group of shingled houses built up on stilts (the palafitos) along the lagoon.  These palafitos are now protected as a national historic monument and are painted different colours like beach boxes.

As we were walking back up the hill towards town, some people running a marathon came barrelling down the hill with a police escort.

Back in town to collect our washing and check out how much it would cost to send our box home (too expensive in Chile!!) we dropped in to the visitors centre to find out where the best place for some “Curanto” might be.  Curanto is a traditional Chiloe meal made by cooking shellfish, pork and chicken on hot stones in a hole in the ground covered with nalca or pangue leaves and damp cloths and then covering it all with dirt and grass and leaving it to simmer for two hours.  It’s not very often cooked this way in restaurants anymore, but there were a few places around that did it.

A model inside the visitors centre in the town square of Iglesia San Francisco de Castro (with the real thing in the background outside), one of the dozen or so heritage listed wooden churches on Chiloe.  

 
And the real Iglesia San Francisco de Castro outside. 

We walked over the the recommended Curanto restaurant, a big tin shed out the back of another restaurant on the square.  Apparently the shed only serves one sitting of Curanto per day at lunchtime and so we became a little suspicious, given the time and process involved and that the place was deserted, when we were told that we could have some for dinner… probably leftovers!  I was craving salmon anyway, and the only other items on the menu were big slabs of meat, so we decided to give it a miss.

Instead we walked over to one of the recommended restaurants in the book and to our delight the two daily specials on the board out the front were Curanto and salmon, served with something else I was missing: curry!   We went in and sat down but were told the specials weren’t available until after 9.30pm…. starving (at 6.30!) we left again only to find curanto and salmon on every second menu down on the waterfront.  We took a brief walk through the feria artisenal (handicraft market) and I took a liking to the colourful salmon skin products, but didn’t find anything I actually needed like a wallet for my wads of pesos!  Hungry and with the waft of the days catch all around, we headed to one of the busier restaurants ‘Brisas del Mar’ for our feed.

 
Tempted by the “Raw (Unriped) Plate of Hedgehogs”, we stuck to the original plan of salmon and curanto, after a yummy entre of Cerviche, the other Chiloe special made up of diced raw salmon, red pepper and fresh coriander and lemon.

Matt with his pile of curanto and a view of the water.

Over dinner we talked about what we might do next and in particular what volunteering opportunities there might be in Bolivia where it would be cheaper to be stationed somewhere for a while.  Back in our room, this research of course involved a bottle of red wine, part of which Matt spilt all over the bed!  (He will blame me, but it was his glass in his hand… !)  Anyways, one of the opportunities that we had come across was caring for and taking pumas and jaguars that had been confiscated from smugglers for a daily walk.  It sounded like a fun idea until we mentioned it to Matt’s Dad and he sent us this article he’d seen about the place:  http://outside1.away.com/outside/culture/200908/bolivia-jaguars-adoption-animal-rehab-center-1.html.

Being in a room with a TV also meant a bit of BBC World was watched and the thought of a flight to Haiti to work on a disaster relief team had crossed Matt’s mind more than once.