So farewell Chiloé. Gracias por los recuerdos

Our recent blog titled “Chiloé” shares how we found Castro the main town on the island was full of energy and character whilst being surrounded by broken coastline and cute villages. But to explore the north of the island from Castro involved long journeys so we decided to 2 centre our stay and we relocated to the islands second town of Ancud for our final few days. We were lucky to have found ourselves a nice hotel set on a promitory which gave us a great view of the coastline and from our room a fabulous sea view.

Basing the end of our stay here gave us an easy connection to the mainland and airport when the time came to say our Chiloé goodbyes.

Historically Ancud is a part of so many Chiloé events over the years and yet it has become a quiet corner of the tourism boom.

The Spanish suffered the final defeat of their Chilean empire in 1826 in heavily fortified Ancud, in 1843 the schooner Ancud full of Chiloé islanders sailed for 4 months south towards the Magellan strait at the bottom of Sth America and laid claim to the Magellanes lands known today as Chilean Patagonia and built vast wool and ranching booms across the south

the above photos show a full size model of the Ancud schooner located in The small but interesting Museo Chilote. This also had some interesting photos of the earthquake after effects as well as some interesting historical local crafts

The earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded in excess of 9.0 on the Richter scale and hit Ancud in 1960 and decimated the town.

But the Northwest corner of Chiloé has spectacular coastline and is a key habitat for the Magellanic and near extinct Humboldt penguins and is a haven and birthing ground for the blue whale. One of our reasons for visiting this part of the island was to hopefully go out on a whale tour but alas we were unsuccessful as they were not running during our time on the island. The trips are subject to weather and wildlife body Conafs assessment. So not this time I’m afraid. We did get to the Penguin reserve as it is on 2 islands within 50 metres of the main beach so thanks to our zoom lens we got a few shots.

we had a lunch on the beach and walked the length of the bay with opportunities to capture some interesting photos

for our final outing in the north of the island we took a local bus to a small port village called Quemchi which is located on the north east side of the island and faces the expanse of water between Chiloé and the Chilean mainland. This has the effect of creating large tides and at times the harbour can experience 7m tides leaving boats stranded on the sea bed at low tide.

The area is one of the countries major shellfish and salmon farming centres with the bay being populated with farm beds and a number of processing factories.Along with the usual discreetly coloured church.

And so we come to the end of our Chiloé experience. You were different to the mainland as only island communities can be and we have memories and photos galore.

Adios