We left our cabin in the woods on Saturday morning with a plan to visit Chiloé Island thirty miles south of Puerto Montt. Travelers rave about the place and we figured with a few days to burn before Layne’s flight to Florida it would be a good place to check out. The road to the ferry is the usual PanAmerican freeway:
And it’s not exactly a freeway, tolls vary but are never more than $4 for a car. I rationalize tolls by pointing out to myself at least here the highway is smooth and well maintained…
It takes about three hours to drive the 120 miles from the ferry landing near Ancud in the north to Quellón at the southernmost point of the highway. And the PanAmerican in the northern half is terrible quality, cement slabs that made the Promaster bounce as we crossed every seam with some potholes thrown in for good measure. We asked ourselves why we were here.
Our neighbors back at the cabin had explained how the ferry works and it’s very simple. You drive on…
…a crew member with a card reader comes by and charges your card, $20 for us, and you drive off 35 minutes later, all very quick and easy.
Pets must stay in the their vehicles but people are free to move around. It was here we started to go incommunicado with a feeble phone signal and almost no internet for a couple of days.
I also noticed they are building a bridge so I guess the four ferry boats running continuous twenty four hour service will be gone soon. For us it was an easy crossing but I imagine in winter it must be pretty sketchy.
After we rolled off the boat the day went dark and as we bounced down the PanAmerican on that awful cement slab pavement the rain started to slash down, just to improve our mood. Chiloé at this point looked just like the mainland.
It’s clearly a summer tourist destination with camping glamping and accommodations on offer everywhere. Most of the island is still asleep this early in the Spring.
There are wildlife warning signs everywhere, not that we’d see them.
I decided Rusty the perfect deserved a walk so we stopped at the first beach for a walk. The drizzle was intermittent but the tide was ebbing so there was room to stretch on the strand.
This is indisputably Chilean Patagonia, land of rain cold and extreme wind of which there was evidence growing out of the ground.
Chiloé is probably the most trash riddled place in Chile, not e revere on the island but a lot of it shows the poverty and relative isolation of the island.
Back on the road we stopped for lunch and to relieve the bouncing from the pavement at Madero’s empanadas, the biggest I’ve ever seen and handmade to order while you wait.
They didn’t take long and he said truckers like to stop by as this is the island’s version of fast food.
Lunch for two filed with ground beef and fried onions in a rich gravy.
He offered to let us fill up our tank with spring water so while I loaded 15 gallons Layne gave him the nickel tour of our home.
Rusty kept an eye on the proceedings. He is getting gray.
Most of Chiloé is neat orderly rolling farmland but every now and again the true nature of the place, an island surrounded by salt water pokes through.
Castro, about half way down is the main town with supermarkets and box stores and lots of traffic.
The southern half of the island is more wooded and hilly with some impressive hills to negotiate.
Our destination for our first day was Quellón at the southern terminus of the PanAmerican Highway. The ever the road from Alaska yet still 1700 miles from the tip of the continent…
Fish farming is a big deal in the calmer inner bay waters around the island.
Slowly the rain clouds drew back and the afternoon turned sunny and breezy which was doubly good for us as the house batteries were relying on our solar panels to charge.
We were four miles from the end of the PanAmerican Highway, the longest motorable road in the world, whose other end is in Alaska.
We drive around the inlet and could look back across the water to Quellón:
The approach road to the monument is apparently popular with locals in a Saturday afternoon in the Spring.
Hito Cero - Milestone Zero.
And there it was, the end of the PanAmerican Highway.
14 months and 16,000 miles since we crossed into Mexico at Laredo.
