Chiloe: The Strange and the Beautiful

El Oso, Puñihuil

A beautiful woman emerges from the sea. Fishermen who catch sight of la Pincoyo as she dances along the rocks are snared by her long hair, but she also saves Chilotes from drowning if their boat capsizes. El Picoy, her husband, summons her from the rocky shoreline to dance in a sexual frenzy for him. If she turns toward the ocean, the sea will offer up its abundance to the inhabitants for Isla de Chiloe, but there will be sarcity if she turns toward land.

El Trauce, a tiny and hideously deformed man, lives in the woods. He attacks young women and disflowers them. When they leave his clutches and return to their village, they are always pregnant with his child.Detail from a house in Ancud

El Invunche is created from a baby boy who is given to the brujos, the male witches of the island, or he might be stolen from home. He is raised naked in the darkness of a cave and is given human meat to feed upon and the milk from cats to drink. As he grows,the witches transform him into a monster, piercing one of his legs to his backbone. When he is allowed to leave the cave, he searches for people by smell. When the "clean" ones see him, they are bond to him forever by their fears. Those that can look upon him and not show fear become the brujos. When an invunche dies, the witches indulge on his flesh because of its curative powers.

Isla de Chiloe has a unique mythological and cultural heritage, distinct from the rest of Chile. It's myths incorporate both those of its indigenous people: the Chonos, the islands first human inhabitants, then the Huilliche, a subgroup of the Mapuche, and also from stories that the Spanish brought.

We crossed the Canal Chacao via a short ferry ride where seals rode along the wake of the boat, and went to Ancud, an atmospheric fishing port on the north end of the island. I wanted to disappear there, spend a rainy winter snuggled in a warm wool sweaters, listening to cuecas and seeing what spell the magic of the island might cast on my writing.

Chiloe, at least the parts most tourists see, is a modern place, twenty-first century in many respects except for slow Internet connections and very attuned to the needs of travelers. Plans are underway for tourists to take in more of the traditional life of Chiloe by housing them with island families.

View from our hostel in Ancud

In an earlier posting I wondered why areas of Chile seem colder than in similar latitudes in the northern hemisphere, especially the farther south one travels. It turns out that there is a frigid current off the coast that affects the continent with more precipitation that even the Pacific Northwest. Chiloe is near the 45th parallel (mid-Oregon), but we felt as though we could have been in Alaska on our first evening there.

In the winter it rains up to two to three weeks without stopping, accompanied by strong icy-cold winds. Our hostel was on top of a hill overlooking the city and the sea. Twice in four days, the wind howled for hours, followed by a heavy downpour. It felt like a shortened version of a winter rain storm in northern California, but this was January and the height of summer. The following pictures were taken on the same day, the brooding gray morning and the afternoon of dazzling sunlight.



Ancud had the feeling of a frontier. After all, we were on the edge of Patagonia. Many of the buildings have rough-hewned wood exteriors. The mercado central looked fairly new,though it was also made of wood and captured the towns essence. Here, as in the other port towns, there was plenty of fresh seafood to buy, along with the beautiful handicrafts. Women sat in their stalls, knitting or crocheting when they weren't dealing with customers. Their yarn is hand dyed using tree bark, roots and grasses.

We spoke to a caballero minding his wife's store who told us that the conquest of Chiloe was less bloody than that of most of the Americas. Many of the settlers were farmers from Galicia, folk of small stature and their ways and the native population blended together fairly harmoniously. Many of the native traditions have not been lost as they have in other parts of the world.

Harbor in Ancud

In the morning from my hostel I could see fishing boats off the coast. The harbor in Ancud is full of boats in the water or in dry dock for repair. There were a few drunks sleeping along stone walls. An old woman (was she really old?) giggled like a school girl as she shared a bottle of what looked like whiskey with the two much younger men snuggling next to her. Seagulls cried like the links squeaking on a chain and the saltwater in the air could almost be tasted.

Gypsy Camp

There are two tours that most tourists take. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jesuits and then Franciscans built over three hundred chuches on the island made of native wood. About 80 remain and are now UNESCO World Heritage Sights.



Interior of cathedral in Castro

We chose to visit the penguins in Puñihuil, an hour or so from Ancud on the seaward coast and just north of the Chiloe National Park, where one of the few rain forests in a temperate climate exists. The day was wet and blustery, but as soon as our little boat set out in the channel it stopped raining. Four or five boats from various enterprises on the island line up on the beach. As you can tell from the picture, raingear is available.




An English interpreter was provided for us, a young man from Haiti named Michael who, as our boat was launched, wanted to know how Barack Obama had ever been elected. He said that Haitian never believed that the United States would elect a black man.

Two types of penguins are found in these small islands: the Humboldt and Magellanic. They have their marches just as do their larger cousins in Antactica. The males mate for life, and if a mate dies he will not eat until he finds a new partner. The females have a reputations for fooling around and aren't nearly as devoted.

Red-legged Cormorants share the islands with the penguins.

Here is a video taken from our boat of a group of penguins diving into the water:



We met a young woman named Maria Jose, her mother and nephew at our hostel.



It turns out they live close to us in the Quinta Region. Maria Jose took us to Castro, the capital of Chiloe, a pleasant city that looked very livable. Of course, I'm writing from the perspective of summer when the sky was blue and the breeze off the ocean was cool but not freezing. It was here at the market we found the central room filled with thousands and thousands of tejidas. El Dorado!

> Castro is well-known for the palafitos, houses built on stilts to accomodate the tide.

This strange building (front and back view) took us by surprise. We think it was a museum. Perhaps it was closed for repairs?












What Chile has lacked in cuisine for us, it has more than made up with music. It seeps in every aspect of life here. These performers were in front of the bus station. They're singing a cuecua, traditional Chilean music. The pitch of the woman's voice is a standard motif.



We said goodbye to Maria Jose's family and came back by ourselves to Ancud. We met up again with Shelly, the Canadian chef, and Dee, a friend of hers from England. One our way to find dinner, we came across this concert in the Plaza de Armas. These young people were a part of a summer music camp.



Afterwards, we found a non-greasy version of a chorellano to eat, shared another bottle of red wine, and talked until at least 11:00. We said goodbye at the Plaza de Armas. Bill and I started on our way up the hill to our bed as hundreds of lolos (teenagers) passed us by; their night was just beginning.