Palafitos and Curanto

Gray morning again, and though we were hopeful it would burn off, it stayed most of the day. We did have a few drops, but that was it. We have been fortunate with the weather. Also tired, so if you don't sense enthusiasm today, it's only fatigue speaking.

Up fairly early, left for the capital of Chiloe: Castro. The big cathedral there was closed for cleaning, but the exterior was in fine shape--and painted yellow and purple! They do enjoy color here; we think that much of the time it is rainy and gray, so the color is uplifting. Anyway, they're cheerful.

Palafitos are houses on the edge of the water with the backside supported by stilts--again, very colorful. There is grant money available and many, once fishermen's houses, are being gentrified, so quite an interesting mix. Our guide Andrea is gregarious and spoke to a man who was working on renovating a palfito--we were invited to see the work on the terrace over the water in the back. We then walked through the small house which turned out to be not as small as it looked. We toured two sections of palafitos--exterior only--taking a lot of photos; they will morph into a quilt one day.

For lunch we joined the locals--we don't really know what we had, we just pointed. I think one was a potato pancake thing with a little meat inside and the other one was more 'bread-y' made of potato flour with a little meat inside. They were okay but we wished we'd had empanadas again; still we were bold and tried something new--that's worth something, isn't it? Two small, energetic women ran the food booth where we ate. There was a young man and a young woman, but they did nothing that we could see. The young man scraped one plate, but those two women were dynamos with one taking orders and serving, the other cooking in extremely cramped conditions. Both rather stout, hair under bandanas, big aprons and engaged expressions as they ran their business.

There was a good-sized artisan market adjacent to the Chiloean food court, lots of knitted goods and yarn. Back in the bus for a short drive to meet a man who single-handedly builds boats. Right now  he has three projects underway, the largest a 36+' fishing boat. They are quite lovely in their simplicity of line.

Last stop of the day was our final home visit, where, once again, a feast was prepared for us. Like a luau, it was cooked on heated rocks in a hole in the ground. Called a curanto, it contained mussels, pork, chorizo, chicken, and potatoes. More wine for dinner--we've had it every day, I'm just not a regular drinker as you already know, so I was pleased to be at the end of the table where no one urged me to eat or drink more than I wanted.

Stopped at a big super-mercado and Kay and I walked back to the hotel. We're getting ready for bed now, as I said, we're weary.

Oh, I didn't tell you that last night we stayed up very late to look at the stars. It was perfectly clear and the Southern Cross was clearly visible--hooray!  Orion was standing on his head, pretty fun. He is the only constellation we share with the Southern Hemisphere. Good night to you all.