Today in 2014 - January 28

Days 16-18 - Los penguinos beben leche

Day 16 was Castro to Ancud via Quemchi, a seaside village whose main attraction is an island that has a 500 m pedistrian bridge connecting it. The island is a biological reserve and has a church on it as well. Back in 2000 UNESCO designated 16 churches as World Heritage sites. The churches on Chiloe (island, SW Chile) were built from wood using nautical and marine building techniques (wood joinery, etc) and are very different in style than the rest of South America. Most of the churches are 100-150 years old, rebuilt almost exactly like the ones that stood before when they were destroyed by earthquakes or fire.

In Ancud, the map given by the booking site was not accurate. At all. It took the better part of an hour, asking a few people (none of whom were at all helpful), educated guesswork, and the breaking of a few traffic laws, to find it. Decent hotel, but not built by master craftsmen. The floor is unevenly sloped, everything sqeaks, and the hot water has a mind of its own. It does however, have an east view overlooking the ocean.

After waiting out the rain the next morning, we headed out to Punilhue for a penguin tour. For 12 USD equivalent, you go out in a boat (unlike most tour boat operators, they were professional to the extreme, boat was well maintained, and the driver was smooth) and they go past a few little islands of the coast and provide commentary (In spanish only unfortunately). In addition to the penguins, we were also treated to a pair of sea lions, numerous species of birds, and a sea otter that has caught a crab.

All done and back on the bikes we headed down to a beach at the end of a road about 15 km away, and after a few slippery hills, arrived at a desterted beach that was phenomenally beautiful. Ride out was easier than in, climbing slippery hills is much more fun than going down them on a bike.

Today we went north on the peninsula to the Corona lighthouse. After waiting out part of a rainstrom on the side of the road under a tree, the day began to warm up. The best way to describe the lightouse site is as a living museum. There is a modern strobe on the tower, but the traditional light is still there, and appears to still be connected and functional. I know this because the guide/operator there encouraged us to climb the tower and look.

On the main floor there is a collection of old and new technology from lighthouses, modern solar powered beacons, juxtaposed against the old behemoths of brass and glass. We don't build things in that manner anymore, and it is a distinct loss. There is a feeling of solidity from objects constructed in that manner that is rare today (Admittedly it was probably rare then as well, only the well built pieces survived).

The rain had left us, and the ride back to Ancud was what you live for as a rider, warm, sunny, clear of traffic, and twisty. Shedding our gear at the hotel we headed to the local church museum. The wood churches mentioned above are cared for by a society helping to rebuild, restore, and preserve them. In Ancud there is a museum that shows how the traditional joinery works with examples of different joints, old pieces that were replaced during restoration, and the opportunity to climb into the tower of the old church all this is housed in. There is no way with North American safety standards that they would allow tourists up the tower. There are no rails around the holes, and the ladders are quite steep. After going up a couple stories, you arrive in a small room with old coloured glass. Quite cool.

The Bridge To Aucar Church

Los Penguinos!

Beach At The End Of The Road

Waiting Out The Storm On The Way To The Lighthouse

At The Top Of The Lighthouse

They don't make them like this anymore

The "original" light system

Road on the way back. Sunny, twisty and clear.

Days 13-15 - Gravel, Ferries and Portugese

It started off as some of the best riding we have done in Chile so far. Open sweeping corners, beautiful paving, just shy of 20 degrees, wind and a touch of cloud. Puerto Montt to La Arena to catch the ferry towards Hornopiren. We expected gravel once we got off the ferry, but the beautiful asphalt continued, until after a bridge it just stopped.

Gravel usually isn't a big deal, we slow down and take it easy, and usually the road has a consistency as to the conditions. Unfortunately, this section (40+ km of it) is under construction, and it goes from hard pack, to several inches of loose stone in about a foot. It changes mid corner, the track suddenly disappearing. For riders like Kyle and Trevor (Who have been riding like madmen since October), this sounds like fun. For my father and I, who much prefer asphalt, it is simply unpleasant.

We arrived in Hornopiren, and after some searching, managed to find the hotel we had booked, and coincidentally, met up with some bikers we met on the ferry. We left the hotel seperately only to stand in line for ferry tickets for the next day. It took a few moments, and them asking for Portugese from Google Translate before I realized that they were Brazilian. The two languages are quite similar which has thoroughly confused some of my spanish vocabulary.

The ferry office didn't open for an hour, and it is amazing the converstaions you can have through charades, google translate and our little bit of Spanish (They are functional, but not comfortable in Spanish from what I can tell). A lovely couple, we ate dinner at the hotel together, talked about football, and drank beer before heading to bed.

Up early, we packed the bikes so we could be at the ferry term... spot/ramp early, which turned out to be a waste of time as we were loaded last anyhow, but we wanted to catch the early ferry to give us more time on the other side.

The ferry runs a different route than it used to, it now runs 4 hours down a fjord where it lets everyone off, you drive 10km and catch a second ferry (Congratulations to the foursome on mountain bikes that managed to catch the ferry as well) to continue on. It used to go around everything, but took much longer. As the boat steams down the fjord it becomes commonplace to have towering mountains on either side, and I found that by a couple hours into the ride, despite occasional gorges and waterfalls to see, the mountains had become normative. There are also a large number of salmon farms on the shores, with houses usually perched nearby, a very remote place to live.

The ride after the ferry to Chaiten was decent gravel this time, as well as passing through some beautiful country, I kept stopping to take pictures.

Chaiten is a pretty town that was largely wiped out in 2008 from a landslide. Much of it has been rebuilt but there are still buildings with the first floor still half filled with silt. I wish we had more than a couple hours to wander around it, another day would have been lovely, but the ferry to Quellon only runs once per week, so we are lucky that it fit into our time table.

The short version is that the ferry left late, and this meant that when we arrived in Quellon, there wasn't enough time at the tide level to get the vehicles off, and so they delayed until just after 2000, meaning that we had an extra 5 hours to kill. The ride to Castro afterwards was great for the first kilometer, then we hit construction again. I'm beginning to believe that someone is ahead of us tearing up the roads we choose to take.