In the south of Chile, lying on the pacific coast right at the beginning of the Patagonian dominions is the archipelago of Chiloé. Separated from mainland, these islands evolved for centuries away from the rest of the country, building their own culture, traditions and way of living. It is composed by a main big island and several smaller islands relatively close to it lying on the gulfs between the big island of Chiloé and the Patagonian main lands. The people on the islands come from the mixture of two indigenous tribes,
chonos and
mapuche, and later the Spanish. The
chonos were basically fishermen and lived from the sea, while the
mapuche lived from the land. This created a unique lifestyle in Chiloé, where sea and countryside are next to each other and people live from fishing but also from agriculture and cattle. It has excellent seafood, but also renowned wool clothing. Moreover, it has beautiful wooden churches, of which some are world heritage sites, and a lot of colonial wooden houses. In short, it is a culture vault and this is what most stands out for Chiloé. Of course it also has natural beauties as native forest or different species of penguins on its coasts, but these can be found on other places of Chile as well.
When people asked me what was I going to see in Chiloé or what I was looking for I said I didn't know. I knew that I wanted to live as much as possible that cultural feeling, but didn't know exactly what to do or where to go. Life itself took care of it and presented me all that I was looking for, without any intervention from my side. Quite convenient I must say! It all started when the night before I found out that a French journalist friend of mine was also going to Chiloé the same day and on the same flight, on a mix of holidays and work. Basically we were together for all my six days and then she stayed to work. We settled in Castro, the main city and the most central on the island and from there we did short day trips to different places. We visited the towns of Ancud, Dalcahue and Chonchi, we saw penguins, trekked on the national park and marvelled ourselves at the endless desertic beaches on the pacific coast.
However, what made this trip special was a hat trick that my journalist friend pulled off. She had a contact on the island to whom she had spoken only by phone for a specific interview some time ago. Born there, he is an investigator of the Chiloé culture since long ago and is also connected to the Ministry of Culture and to documentaries on the television. My friend wanted to meet him in person, which we did and he ended up being our guide at many different levels. Making use of the natural warmth and sympathy of the people from this region, after a couple of hours of conversation he invited us to go with him to his village, Calen, where he was restoring an old house, which belonged to his father. Calen is a small village by the inner coast of Chiloé, very peaceful and not easy to reach. His house is by the beach, at just an amazing couple of meters from the sea when the tide is high, all made of wood. After cooking the delicious salmon and seafood that we bought on the way, we took the time to drink a glass of wine around a long and interesting conversation about one of the most intriguing characteristics of Chiloé: its mythology. Born with the original indigenous people and complemented by the Spanish, the myths and legends here are unique, covering sea and land, and until a few years ago feverishly believed by the people.
The day after, we went to spend the night there, a full moon night. Amazing and relaxing experience, lying on the hammock, looking at the sea at night and listening to the sound of the waves. On the next day we experienced something unique and rare in Chiloé nowadays: a so called
minga. It is a gathering of friends and neighbours to help someone in some heavy work, normally something as exotic as moving a house of place. Houses here are based on big wooden pillars and not directly on the ground, because with the heavy annual rain in Chiloé, the wood would get rotten. Then, whenever someone decides to move the house of place they move it, through sea and land if needed. Tradition says that this is not paid with money, but the organizer has to offer food and drink to the people. In this case, it was not like that, as the house move was for a museum. Anyway, the house travelled through the sea, pulled by boats, until it reached the shore. From there, 8 pairs of bulls pulled it out of the water in a quite complicated procedure. We then spent that same night at his house again and the next day, on the way back, we went to see one of the islands nearby, to eat oysters! I returned to Santiago with the feeling that something special happened. A lot of childhood memories came up during my stay in Chiloé, it is not that different from the countryside of my home country, but here you have it together with the sea and you can literally be at the beach or on a big grass field, depending on which door you take to exit your house. Just perfect!
It is almost two years now, that I left Portugal for a fresh start in Chile. Yesterday was my last day at Paranal. Though it has been on my mind for a while, I could not run away from it anymore, my time in Chile is running out. The last months haven't been easy, I had to start making some decisions concerning my future, which made me more than once come across the fact that I will leave Chile. When I left Portugal, I knew that I would be back in two years, that this experience was putting my life into pause for two years before pressing play again. Now I see me, staring at the play button without any desire of pushing it, knowing that pushing it means pushing the stop button of these two years as well. I am at that point of my path where I have to make one of those decisions that leave something behind. And whatever the decision is, I will leave a lot behind and I HATE it!
Yesterday was my last day at Paranal. I lived here for more than half of the time I was in Chile. I said many times that Paranal was my home, whilst Santiago was going on holidays for 6 days every two weeks. The atmosphere at Paranal is not just that of a common workplace. People sleep here, share emotions, share a life, you create yourself a family, because it is the only way to keep sane in such a working schedule. In two hours, I had to say goodbye to my family, more than 50 people, one by one, office by office. To some people I said goodbye several times during the day. It doesn't really matter if they were around for two years or just a couple of months. The strength of the bonds you create here is timeless. I managed to find a way to make the moment less emotional, less depressive, by creating opportunities to meet everyone again before leaving, either in Santiago or Antofagasta, but in the end the moment was very very hard to handle. I do not know if I was sad or just melancholic, but what is a fact is that the day I left Paranal, without any perspective of returning, was the day that started the process of an ending. An ending for a period on my life, an ending for my time in Chile and even an ending for this blog. Saudade... Inevitable...
