Barking Mad

There is one thing that Chileans have plenty of and that's dogs. There are thousands of them and for some reason they all decide to bark from 3am until 8am. It seems there are more dogs than people. So today was spent walking amongst the dogs to find some interesting things in Castro the capital of Chiloé Island. You can basically cover the whole city in a few hours. The two highlights today were the palafitos, wooden houses built on stilts over the water, and the Church of San Francisco located in the main plaza. The palafitos were interesting but might have been better at high tide. The houses were pretty run down and some looked like they were about to fall into the mud.

However, the Church of San Francisco was something else. It is made entirely of native wood, specifically making use of wood shingles on the roof and walls. Some of the church wasn't even originally made with nails, using wooden pegs instead. The woodwork was incredible. The outside of the church was covered with galvanised iron. The churches all over the island were built by the Jesuits this way, so that when they left the area in the 1700's, the natives would continue to look after them. They built about 70 on the island and of these 16 are rated today as UNESCO heritage sites.

Trivia Fact: The people of Chiloe are called chilotes. They came from the mix of huilliche and Europeans. The huilliches in turn come from the Mapuches and the Mapuches come from the Araucanos who were the first prehistoric tribe described by the Spanish.

Just a late add on to this blog as I have just got back from dinner which featured the traditional Chiltoe dish of Curanto - a dish of seafood - (including oysters, clams, mussels and some other barnacles (I think called picorocos - giant barnacles - which I didn't recognise) along with chicken, beef, ham, potatoes, chapaleles (a kind of potato dumpling), vegetables and sausage. Accompanied by a seafood soup with bread. The perfect meal covering all food groups. It's normally cooked over hot rocks (peasant style) but tonight cooked in a pressure cooker!