Chaiten, Chile (revised!)

Apologies to those who read this blog before I edited it! The electricity in Chaiten went off as I was drafting. They announced the shutoff on the radio, and I had just enough time to publish as is. I{ve tried to fix the photos here, although I am creating more errors since I can{t make an apostrophe on this keyboard! -- K

Our friends from Colorado returned to the U.S. a couple of days ago, and now Gary and I are on our own again, heading farther south in Chile.

We went to a cultural encuentro in the village of Dalcahue, which reminded me of a county fair. There were lots of booths of traditional food. Behind each booth, there was an outdoor "kitchen" where the food was being prepared. I think this is what is known as an asado, or barbecue, but it is much more involved than any BBQ I´ve ever seen. People were roasting all kinds of meat on homemade spits with wooden poles that men turned by hand. Others made a kind of potato pancake that was made of dough wrapped around a giant rolling pin that someone turned over a fire. Others boiled empanadas or shellfish in a pot over an open fire.



But the most exciting part of the festival was the house moving. They attached cattle to yokes, and the cattle pulled a cross across a field and through a swamp as a couple hundred spectators ran along side it! This is an important tradition here, although I don{t exactly understand why!



We spent a night in Quellón, on the southern end of Isla Chiloé. Quellón also happens to be at the south end of the Pan American Highway, which stretches up through South America, through Mexico City and through Fairbanks, Alaska. We stayed in a hotel, a bit upscale compared to our usual hospedaje digs, with big windows overlooking the ocean. From our room, we watched the sun set over the water. This town is very pretty, but it´s ALWAYS RAINING! This is a lot like the trip we took a few years ago, up coastal British Columbia and Alaska.

Yesterday we took an all-day ferry ride back to the mainland of Chile, to the village of Chaitén. The only way to get to Chaitén from the north is by boat, but there is a highway heading south, which we will take. This highway is relatively new and has helped connect southern Chile to the rest of the country, although I´ve heard that the highway is unpaved for the most part, and we´ve noticed that bus tickets are more expensive down here. There is one ATM in town, which doesn´t accept my card, but luckily I got some extra cash before coming here.

Finding lodging can be interesting in Chile. What often happens is that we get off a ferry or bus and a woman approaches us offering a room. These are small time business people who rent out a few rooms in their house. They are often the cheapest places to stay, and nice because we get access to the kitchen and sometimes the clothes washing machine.

In Chaitén, we were approached by a woman offering a room for 5,000 pesos per person (US $10), with free breakfast and internet access. A second woman ran up shouting that she had a room for 4,000 pesos per person (US $8). We chose the first place, based on gut instinct I think. As our new hosts drove us to the hospedaje, the woman we didn´t choose gave our new hosts the bird.

Like most hospedajes, our room is very basic, just a room with a bed, and a shared bathroom. Downstairs, there is a wood burning kitchen stove where if you´re lucky, the señora bakes bread. (Here, she makes toast on a Chilean toaster over a wood stove).



I was curious about the cheaper hospedaje, and so we checked it out today. Photo below. All I can say is that it looks like a farm labor camp to me. But this place is the exception, and most everywhere we have stayed has been decent, if very basic.



The rest of our pictures are on flickr, flickr.com/photos/kimigary. Look under Isla Chiloe and Chaiten for pictures corresponding to this blog entry.