We had never heard of the Chiloe until a few weeks ago. 

It was those Canadian girls (remember them) who mentioned it first, it was only the second time I witnessed them seem animated. The first time they were talking about facebook and the missfortune of a former collegue. 

Then all of a sudden everyone seemed to be talking about it and planning on going there. 

Tim from Australia said "My mate is a travel writer and I asked her where to go and she said Chiloe"defo go there" 

Paul from Columbia said "We are making hitch-hiking all the way to Patagonia but we will go through Chiloe" 

The American were all planning on Chiloe to see the penguins. 

So next place for us had to be Chiloe. 

The one problem we had was that a lot of the sights are spreadout and it could be a lot of hard work getting around without a car. 

So we got a car, or a pickup truck to be precise...and we're off. 

Getting to Chiloe is a straight forward process from where we were, couple of hours drive, half hour ferry and another couple of hours to the centre of the island and the main market town. So even departing at a leisurely 1pm meant that by half 6 we were settling into our cabaña just south of Castro. 

We are now becoming a lot more gung-ho with our approach and we traveled without a confirmed place to stay for the night. Jessica had tried to book somewhere but no confirmation was received and working WIFI has been difficult to find so we planned on just turning up and hoping for the best. 

Before we left home we invested in some international sim cards, however over the course they have time after time to proved themselves to be both expensive and unreliable. Pretty much useless. In hindsite it would have been considerable less hassle if we had bought one in each country and given how much of a pain that would be, it says a lot. 

So as I was saying, we were winging it. This does add a bit of excitement/stress but certainly doesn't add anything cost wise and prices charged are less than it would cost booking anything through a website. 

So what did Isla Grande de Chiloe have to offer? 

Well quite a bit. If anything too much so I will focus on the main town. 

Castro 

Castro is a feast for both the eyes and stomach (not just for the humans) and even from just driving through it when we arrived on the island, it was obviously a beautiful place.  

Our first task the following day was finding ourselves a lavendaria (laundrette) to take care of all our dirty clothes and thankfully there is one on the same block as the beautiful church, Inglesia San Francisco. 

This was very handy as although we weren't exactly washing our dirty linen in public, we were karting two weeks worth around in a couple of semi burst black bags so a smooth transition from doing this to enjoying sites of the main square with its historic church, fountains, bandstand and 1 o'clock tsunami warning siren was very welcome. 

The place is fairly compact so after five minute walk downhill we found ourselves down by the fishing docks and hussle and bussle of their famous fish market. We seemed to time our visit to perfection as not only did we happen to be in the town square at one o'clock it would turn out that half past twelve is the perfect time to arrive at the fish market. 

This is the point where staff start lobbing fish guts and any other unwanted fishy delights into the sea to the boistrous, baying mob from the local colony of sea lions. They certainly were big brutes and Chiloe can lay claim to having the second largest sea lions in the whole of South America (apparently the accolade of the biggest lies somewhere in Peru). 

Needless to say the day so far was going fairly well,and with minimum effort. So when a local approached me offering a very reasonable price for a boat trip it seemed a no brainer. Less than twenty minutes later we were cruising (well more chugging) around the open waters taking in the amazing scenerio and getting a great view of the Palafitos (think Tobermory on stilts). 

We rounded off the day by popping into a recommend hidden gem that the owners of the cabaña said we must visit. It was very good and we managed to get the kids to try spider crab, mussels and pulpo (octopus). Castro really is a great place and to make a great day even better I was able to replace a lost cable for my mp3 so it was not only a cracking journey back to the cabaña, in a pick up track that we were all getting rather fond of, it was a cracking journey with the tunes pumping.

Lorne