Estamos en Ancud

March 29, 2018March 18, 2018 C C 0 Comments

Ever since reading the Lonely Planet back in Sydney, I’d been looking forward to the day when we would finally arrive in Chiloé in Chile’s Lake District. The question was, however – should I know by now that the Lonely Planet is full of poetic licence, and it would be truly disappointing….. or would their enticing description of the island hold true? We will see….

Our first stop on Chiloé Island (after our bus-ferry combo journey) was Ancud…

PB on the ferry – ready for his Chiloé adventures

Ancud is the second biggest town on Chiloé, but after Puerto Montt it felt pretty small!!! In fact – thanks to our accommodation being in a very quiet part of town, AND having an awesome balcony overlooking the water – it turned out to be up there in the list of the most relaxing places that we’ve stayed on the trip (unfortunately this list is just hypothetical – we don’t really have one – so I can’t share it… but believe me if we did have one – Ancud would be in it 🙂 )

PB relaxing with a coffee and cake on a sunny afternoon on our balcony 🙂

CC relaxing on the balcony with a spot of lunch… not a lunch of typical Chilote cuisine… but when you have limited cooking facilities (and can’t be bothered to leave the lovely balcony) you have to take what you can get! And hey, it’s been such a long time since we last had instant noodles that they actually tasted pretty good!?!

We even got to watch the sunset from the balcony 😉

Ancud doesn’t have a lot of attractions to hold a tourist there for long – but maybe that’s why I liked it – it was quieter than other places!!!

They do have a waterfront with colourful boats and new birds…

And also a fort and a beach…

Ancud’s main church was nice, and there were other wooden churches dotted around town – but they didn’t have UNESCO world heritage status like many of their counterparts across Chiloé (more about the awesome churches in Chiloé coming soon in another post…)…

The main church in the centre of town in Ancud

A cute wooden church we spotted while walking down a random street in Ancud

Another nice looking church on the horizon…

What it did have ‘church-wise’ however, was an awesome museum with lots of information about all 16 of the UNESCO world heritage churches in Chiloé… there was also a model of each of the churches made in wood… a perfect way to decide which of the wooden churches you wanted to visit!!!

Check out all the churches on Chiloé with UNESCO heritage status

It wasn’t just the churches that were made of wood… many of the houses were made of wooden shingles and looked lovely 🙂

Ancud was also a chance for us to sample some of the culinery delights of Chiloé, many of which are quite unlike anything you can get in the rest of Chile (well the parts we’ve visited so far anyway!!!)

PB tucks into lunch… okay, so some of the food on Chiloé can be found in other parts of Chile too …yes, that is a big pile of chips with a sausage on top – that’s a Chilean speciality… 🙂

This one we haven’t spotted outside Chiloé though – Milcao filled with cheese – YUM! Milcao is a special type of pancake, made entirely of potatoes…. (and then whatever filling added)

So, we left Ancud yet to see the ‘wild’ part of Chiloé promised by the Lonely Planet – but pretty content as we had a really nice time in Ancud 🙂

Chile to Mexico

Estamos en Ancud

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