TRAVEL AND TOURS

How much does mankind owe Chiloe Archipelago, and how fair is history to it? It forgets, for example, the occasions when it supplied the city of Lima with larch timber in its Vice royal times, when viceroys governed the country and sailors risked their lives rounding Cape Horn.
Nor does it remembers when the newcomers from the Iberian Peninsula exploited the Indians, forcing them to mine Cucao gold, and to weave woolen clothes giving the name of "parcela" (a euphemism for slavery) to this arrangement. This must be the reason why history forgets these pages, it suffers from amnesia.
Now, contrasting with the above situation, you have a grateful population in 35 of your 40 small islands. Twenty thousand residents are proud of their diverse geography, featuring waterfalls, volcanoes, lakes, thermal springs and rivers. All this is a source of admiration and, perhaps, even a little envy to sophisticated citizens and trekking enthusiasts.
Chiloe's islanders pray to God with devotion, sure of their good luck. They pray in all the 150 churches built with great commitment by the Franciscans, many of which belong to the National Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a distinction bestowed on them by UNESCO.

There townspeople pray and, no doubt, as they view the wooden walls surrounding them, feel as if they were at home in their own houses, constructed with the same materials but anchored on palafittes, tree trunks embedded in the ocean platforms of the islands, to protect them from the strong tides.
The Chilotas surely recall their ancestors: Mapuches, Cuncos, Chones, and the Spanish and other immigrants who, to a great or less extent, contributed to the development of the present archipelago, first sighted in 1540 by sailor Alfonso de Camargo, and officially discovered in 1553 by Francisco de Ulloa.
The first Spanish tourists were struck by the great Island of Chiloe, the second largest in all of South America, which today is a province measuring 9,181.6 square kms and having 130,000 inhabitants, located 1,057 kilometers from Santiago and 59 kilometers from Puerto Montt.

At the northern tip of this great island lies Ancud, a municipality founded on August 20, 1768 by the Spanish Brigadier Carlos Berenguer, and that is now the area with greatest contact with the Chilean mainland. Its population is around 24,000.
Its wonderful public square has seven old-style towers, surrounding a replica of the schooner Ancud. This ship, built by the "Chilotas" took possession of the Straits of Magellan in the year 1843. Another place to visit is the seafront avenue where one can view the Quetalmahue mini-gulf, with its beautiful arms of water, and the Lacuy Peninsula.
Castro, founded in 1567 by Maņo Ruiz de Gamboa, is the Capital of the Province of Chiloe. The Plaza de Armas, the Regional Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Chiloe and the church of St. Francis give Chiloe, a charm that is enhanced by its palafitos, houses built on wooden piles to protect them against the high tides. These attractions are prolonged at Quellon with its impressive view of Corcovado Volcano and the chance it offers of visiting the native communities of Compu, Chadmo Central and Hauipulli, the only ones on the islands, or the "city of three floors", Chonchi, with its cypress wood constructions, or Chiloe National Park, a rough country bastion on Isla Grande.