Road Trip!

One of my favorite things to do when in a foreign country is to pick a town on a map and take a local bus out there to see what there is to see. These rides are often as much fun because of the fellow passengers (including chickens or goats in some cases) as they are for the trip and destination. The Chilean buses seem pretty tame with no livestock but occasional musicians.

This morning Paula and Tite were on a shopping trip around town, so it gave me a perfect opportunity. I looked at a map of the towns around Quellón and "Chaiguao" looked like a good destination. It's only about 7 miles away along a gravel road and right on the tip of a penninsula that should have views of the mountains and volcanos to the east.

Unfortunately, at the bus station for country buses (not the Big Bus Station for travel around the country) I discovered that there apparently aren't too many buses that go to Chaiguao. But there was a bus sitting there that said it's destination was, "Auchac". A quick look at the map showed Auchac to be on the coast a bit further north and on a paved road. That seemed to generally fit the bill and I bought a bottle of carbonated water (agua con gas) and hopped on (on these buses you pay the driver rather than buy a ticket at the office).

The bus headed north on the section of the Panamerican Highway that we have been on several times and then took a right to go towards the coast. Rolling countryside with views of fjord-like inlets kept my interest. We stopped to pick up or drop off people along the side of the road and also at the town of Huidad which has one of the famous Chiloé churches. I got this photo from the moving bus. Huidad is a real small town with just one dusty street and a few houses along either side. The bus bounced along to the end of the village dropping people off and picking up others and then did a u-turn and headed back to the paved road.

A right hand turn had us passing through more hilly scenery and eventually down a long hill to the beach. It turned out that my final destination of Auchac wasn't really much more of a destination than Huidad - just less dusty and with more boats. The bus driver dropped me at the boat pier where a lady in a small tienda (grocery store) sold me a bag of Lays potato chips and bottle of Coca Cola. As I sat in the shade of a beached boat and drank the coke a group of dolphins (http://www.cms.int/reports/small_cetaceans/data/c_eutropia/c_eutropia.htm) passed along the line of anchored boats. Trying to catch a photo of them with the digital camera (it has a delay from hitting the button to the actual picture production) was a challenge. After several misses, I think I managed to catch them as a couple small black fins on this photo with a rowboat anchored behind. It's not the greatest picture, but it's something...

One of the reasons that I enjoy these random outings is that you can come across unusual examples of country living - ways that the people live everyday without being in some sort of a contrived "tourist trap" situation. We came across this man painting his fence and, as you can see, color is a big part of life here. His old red fence will now be yellow and the houses behind him are bright orange and blue. All pretty typical of the color schemes around Chiloé.

We also passed another of the World Heritage Site churches in Auchac. Both of these churches are very typical of the style of Chiloé churches. Some date from the 18th century and their
simple features (again with bright colors) seem to be perfectly situated in their humble surroundings.

Here are some additional shots of Auchac: