The island of Chiloe

We flew from Santiago to Puerto Montt, rented a car and headed south (including a short ride across the water on a car ferry) to the island of Chiloé. 

 We stayed in the city of Castro, which took about 2 hours to drive to from the ferry port.  We've learned that distances are much further than they look on the map in Chile.

We arrived in Castro that evening and set out for a park in the very south of the island the next day.  It was 20 kilometers of unpaved road to reach the park entrance.  Here are some friends we met along the way.

 Finally arrived at the park!

We took a nice walk that began right behind the ranger's station and led to a river.

Quacker Jack in the park.

Castro is famous for the palafito houses on the shores of the water - unlike the beach houses I think of, these are the BACKS of the houses, not the front.

 There is an extreme tide in Castro, and our hotel overlooked this bay-like area.  The water started flowing out in the evening and stayed out until late morning the next day.

Chiloé is known for its wooden churches.  This one is in the town square of Castro.  The interior is also all wood and just gorgeous.

The roses outside the church were huge!

We visited the history museum in Castro to help get a better understanding of the island.

There was a nice section about wildlife on the island in the museum.  This is a photo of Quacker Jack with a photo of a Monito del Monte.  I don't think they are that big in real life.

Another shot of the church in the town square of Castro.

You can see the tide came in while we were in town for the morning. 

Another day of nice weather, another park.  This park was much easier to get to and had many different trails to take.  The first one we walked lead to the Pacific Ocean.

This is at the overlook of the Pacific before we walked down to the shore.  

Quacker Jack with the Pacific Ocean in the background.

We like these pictures because it gives some scale to the vastness of the shoreline while we were there.  We think we arrived during low tide, which gave us a nice big beach to walk on.

 See the mountains in the background?

 After the trail to the Pacific, we took another one into a kind of swamp area.  Can you spot the frog in this picture with Quacker Jack?  Hint - it's on the right hand side of the picture

This is another church we saw just outside of Castro. 

Now, we are back on the mainland in Ensenada, which is in the Lake District in the south of Chile.