Our last full day on Chiloe Island where the sun is still shining I am pleased to say. I got up at 7.30 this morning to take a few sunrise pictures from our bedroom window (above), the mountains you can see are in the Pumalin National Park, about 40 miles away. Most of the land in the park was accumulated by a chap called Douglas Tompkins who founded North Face clothing, over the years he amassed nearly 1,000,000 acres of land which he ensured remained a wilderness area managed by a trust. He died last year and the whole area has been donated to the people of Chile.
We were hoping to pass through it but logistically it will prove too difficult (that's a polite way of saying it would involve catching a car ferry at 3am in the morning which is not what we do on holidays).
The biggest industry in the area is salmon farming, the sea between Chiloe Island and the mainland is quite sheltered so ideal for the pens required. There was however a “disaster” a few years ago when a storm broke the cages and over 600,000 salmon escaped, I have visions of the locals rushing out with nets, pots and buckets trying to catch some dinner.
Salmon appears on most menus, a couple of nights ago we both ordered it as a starter expecting thinly cut slices as an appetiser. What we got was a huge pile of salmon chunks, more than enough for a main course, it was very tasty but we should have ordered one dish between us.
Today we caught a small car ferry over to Lemuy Island which has lots of nice bays and little villages however its big claim to fame are the wooden churches which are at the centre of every village. The first European settlers on Chiloe were sailors / fishermen so the houses and churches they built made use of their shipbuilding skills and the local timber.
This tradition has continued, even very large buildings are still made of wood as is every house, they are then clad in wooden shingles or corrugated iron sheets. The finest are of course the churches, there are 160 on the main island and 10 good examples on the island we visited today. The only disappointing thing was none were open so we could not see inside.
Left is the main cathedral in Castro, despite it's appearance it is a wooden frame and corrugated iron cladding, below are four from our tour of Lemuy.