Patagonia & Antarctica Ultimate Adventure - Southern Chile, Latin America
In week 12 of our 13-week pole-to-pole cruise on the MS Roald Amundsen with Hurtigruten Expeditions, we cruise and explore the southern coast of Chile and experience the majestic Chilean fjords.
Day 78 - Castro, Chile
The dramatic change of scenery as we cruised the Chilean coast was a welcoming gift. Chile has a coastline of 6500 km. The first week was spent cruising the Atacama desert, and now we feel we are in the Sound of Music with rolling lush green meadows sprinkled with wildflowers.
We arrived in Castro this morning, a beautiful picturesque town on Chiloé Island in Chile's Lake District. You have a familiar sense of New England, surrounded by rolling green hills. It is unique, especially with the colourful wooden stilt houses that line the waterfront.
Today, we opted for 'Sal & Wayne' style, bypassing all the excursions to get lost in a city and escape the crowds. It was a perfect city to explore by foot; the city centre was moments from the pier. We enjoyed exploring and hunting down a local cafe to experiment with the coffee. Unfortunately, the first cafe scored no points, but we were impressed with the second find, a local bakery.
I continued exploring the city, catching a glimpse of the Church of San Francisco. Declared World Heritage by UNESCO in 2000, it is one of the most important historical buildings in the city.
We stumbled on a viewpoint with a cascading view of the vividly coloured homes on stilts across the low tide, along with another smaller pocket on the other side of Castro.
This set us up to enjoy the waterside walk and beautiful, unique homes; unfortunately, a fire struck six homes the year prior, and they were busy rebuilding the beautiful homes. We popped in for a coffee along the way; a gorgeous new boutique hotel 'Sizigia Hotel' was now occupying the space,
