04.03.2013

Thermal Hotel and Chiloé

Here are some pictures of the Hotel with the Thermal Pools I had written about: http://sailing.smichah.de/#47.0
















Chiloé

Chiloé is Chile’s most desired island for vacation. It is not a place to go for swimming and “beaching” like Chile’s Easter Island (although I see kid swimming in the 14°C cold water), but it sure is a beautiful island with lots of possibilities on the island itself and the surrounding islands. Mostly green nature to watch, two National Parks partly along the southwest and west coast with great  hiking possibilities (not as tough hiking as in Torres del Paine National Park) as well as offers for horseback riding, Golf, Kayak, whale watching, Pinguin island and so on. The island lies just an about 50km Ferry ride away to the south of Puerto Montt, which is civilized area reachable by car/train/plane. From north to south the island is a bit less than 200km long, probably around 50km wide and consist of green hills, lots of farming, lots of (vacation) homes with big lots, a couple of towns, the capitol Castro (around 18000 inhabitants) and the one paved highway #5 (besides that only sand/stone streets. The people here are very friendly, relaxed and mostly live of fishing (especially all the (ugly) salmon farms and the mussle farms) and the industry and tourism around it.





A specialty on this island are the houses on piles. The first inhabitants were all fishermen and did not want to build houses on the land. In order to build over water they needed high piles since the tide has a couple of metres here. The wooden constructions have become typical for Chiloé and so today they still, even on land, often build houses on piles.  That’s what I have understood talking to people here, but maybe I did not get it right. Fact is all the houses at the waters and  near the waters are on piles and many inland as well. 




Another unique architecture here are the wooden churches. The whole church including the interior is made out of wood – in the design of stone. Except for the windows, they are made out of glass. Unbelievably beautiful. Here: Iglesia San Francisco, World Heritage. By the way: there was a voting on the colour of the church. They say it was a long process. I wonder why...







AND: the german to be found. 

Some more impressions on the island:

















We’re tied to the pier in the marina Quinched, about 10km away from Castro. Due to the road situation you need 30Min. for those 10km (less than 7miles!). This place here is very peace-and beautiful. Like a park with picnic area on the hill, a little café open tues-sun from 4-8pm. The facilities are good and in local wooden design. They even have a washing machine here which you can use for $4/load, which is the cheapest washing we ever had on this whole trip. 





All pictutres of Chiloé can be found here: http://sailing.smichah.de/#48.0

Jens, our last crew member, left at 1pm today. Marcus and I finished cleaning up Alita, tomorrow we’re gonna head out again. Destination: short stop in Valdivia and then race up to Valparaíso to do all the work on the boat. In two weeks we’re supposed to head out to the great big Pacific Ocean, with one or two new crew members anxious to set sails.

Chiloé is definitely worth a visit if you’re in Chile and nearby anyway – as well as the Hotel with the Thermal pools in Bahía Dorita.

Pictures of Chilenan Channels

We reached the island of Chiloé today, where we parked Alita in the Marina Quinchema. Another beautiful, peaceful place, about 10km away from the next bigger town Castro, the capitol of this island just south of Puerto Montt. More about this island follows in 2 days.

Our trip to here was very good. We stopped for a night in front of the 5-star hotel Thermal de Puyuguapi in Bahía Dorita. This hotel is peaceful place to relax for a weekend or a couple of days. Situated in untouched nature it uses natural ressources for the running of this hotel (water, electricity). Hot water comes gratis our of hot springs. This is used for all the thermal pools, indoor and outdoor as well as the hotel's water usage and heating. I have never been to natural thermal pools, it was just wonderful. We relaxed there for a whole day. I think Marcus and I have been in the water for many hours. We even went swimming in the bay (at 18 degrees C water temperature) - at least I went swimming a couple of times, even again yesterday morning before we left, the guys went in and out once. If you live in Chile, this place definitely has to be on your list of to dos. Pictures follow.

Now I finally managed to upload the pictures from the trip of the last 2 weeks into the net. A choice is here in the blog, as always, the rest can be found in the photo gallery.

Travelling the channels in Chile:











 The biggest floating ice we came across:


 Puerto Micaela








For more pictures see: http://sailing.smichah.de/#46.2

The famous Pio XI photoshooting session: 




















 The dolphins, which come to visit us every day (one is playing on his side...)





All pictures of the glaciar photoshooting can be found here: http://sailing.smichah.de/#44.0

Pictures of Puerto Eden follow in a new blog entry.