Day trip to the islands

After the last couple of days waking this morning was a fabulous experience. Not a cloud in the sky when opening the curtains. Brilliant for a day trip to Isla Quinchao and a couple of the towns on the island - Curaco do Velez and Achao.

We started by catching the bus to Dalcahue where we simply walked onto the ferry which takes you about 200m over to Isla Quinchao. There, much to our surprise there was no obvious bus stop so we started walking up the road towards Curaco, before we had even gone 1/2 a mile a bus came by to whisk us off to Achao. Seems the buses actually go directly to Achao from Castro so we did not need to change at Dalcahue - Duh!

The island is quite lovely and from Achao we had super views over the Chiloe archipelago, a pile of little islands shining in the sunshine. Stopping for lunch in a small local restaurant Clare went for a seafood chowder sort of dish and was presented with a quite remarkable pile of shellfish in a yummy soup. The pile included a large lump of what tasted a bit like crab/lobster, would not like to conclude for certain which, salmon, oysters, clams and mussells, delicious!

After lunch, because of the wonderful weather, we decided to walk the 11km back to Curaco. The journey took us past a few miradors, round farms and over the hill to Curaco which is famed for its "shingled" church, water mills and oysters. Found the church without a problem but sadly the water mills and oyster sales flumoxed us so we just jumped on the next bus back to Castro.

Next stop Porto Montt for the night then off on the Navimag for 4 days to Porto Natales. Woo Hoo! Glaciers, whales, porpoises and fyords to look at, hope the weather is good.