Lonely Planet says about Chiloé's weather: "When it's not misting or raining, it tends to be sprinkling or drizzling". Brillant prospects thus... But hey, it's just water! In fact, the day we got totally soaked, was the best of all!
We were the only guests at Chepu EcoLodge, a scenic place on Chiloé's west coast, and just listening to the instructions on how to reach a remote penguin colony early next morning. And then happened what always happens, when you think you couldn't be further away from it all: we bumped into a Dutch couple from Florian's hometown Venlo! The boys even went to school together :-) To our relieve they also joined our penguin quest. Next day's hike sounded quite adventurous after all: get up at 5am, catch a fisherboat in the dark, walk hard for 4 hours, pass through a temporal sandy bridge, find the penguins (!), return no later than 10am, otherwise the only way back would be cut off by high tide... So much for the theory. In practice we found it impossible to move fast, after a night of downpours. The challenge was rather not to get stuck in mud! But eventually got pass the slimy cow trails and continued on a beautiful beach, along a 30 year old shipwreck and a huge blue whale carcass, that had been washed ashore 2 years ago. Aah, and then we managed to take a wrong turn, reducing our time window at the penguin island from 1 hour to just 15 minutes! In addition, it started pouring down once more. In the end we did reach Ahuenco point, and even spotted about 10 Magellanic penguins! But there was no time to contemplate, tide waters were already rushing in. One photo each and back to higher grounds! What an unforgettable trip - and finally a positive experience on Chiloé.
We were the only guests at Chepu EcoLodge, a scenic place on Chiloé's west coast, and just listening to the instructions on how to reach a remote penguin colony early next morning. And then happened what always happens, when you think you couldn't be further away from it all: we bumped into a Dutch couple from Florian's hometown Venlo! The boys even went to school together :-) To our relieve they also joined our penguin quest. Next day's hike sounded quite adventurous after all: get up at 5am, catch a fisherboat in the dark, walk hard for 4 hours, pass through a temporal sandy bridge, find the penguins (!), return no later than 10am, otherwise the only way back would be cut off by high tide... So much for the theory. In practice we found it impossible to move fast, after a night of downpours. The challenge was rather not to get stuck in mud! But eventually got pass the slimy cow trails and continued on a beautiful beach, along a 30 year old shipwreck and a huge blue whale carcass, that had been washed ashore 2 years ago. Aah, and then we managed to take a wrong turn, reducing our time window at the penguin island from 1 hour to just 15 minutes! In addition, it started pouring down once more. In the end we did reach Ahuenco point, and even spotted about 10 Magellanic penguins! But there was no time to contemplate, tide waters were already rushing in. One photo each and back to higher grounds! What an unforgettable trip - and finally a positive experience on Chiloé.
