Day 19 - Chepu valley.

Copiously sick in the middle of the night. It’s not food poisoning; if it were, I’d still be seriously unwell. I suspect it’s the mysterious illness that afflicts me from time to time ever since my return from Istanbul after celebrating the New Year there in the 2006; for several months, I was throwing up almost on a daily basis with no discernible reason for it. My GP couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and those who wondered if I were ‘with child’ had to be told that if so, I must’ve been knocked up the same way as the Virgin Mary. After a while, it all stopped, but every now and then, it pops in to say hello.


There’s a flock of black-necked swans floating outside my window in the morning. Back home we don’t get more than a couple at a time, usually, whereas here you’re not likely to see less than twenty.

Having finished with Castro’s accommodation options, I catch a bus back across the island, instructing the bus driver to drop me off at Km 25, or the ‘cruce de Chepu’, from where a gravel road leads west into the Chepu Valley. The driver almost misses my stop and I have to walk back to where grey-ponytailed Fernando awaits me with open arms beside his pickup truck. Fernando is one half of a middle-aged couple from Santiago; he and Amory moved to Chepu ten years ago, fed up with city life and aiming to live off the land and become self-sufficient. Not only did they succeed, but they now run the Miradór de Chepu, an amazing eco-campsite that’s powered by the wind turbine on the property; Fernando’s got a water desalination project in the works and is planning to introduce several electric boats to enable people to get close to wildlife without disturbing it, as they are silent and eco-friendly. I was last here in November 2008, when my Ancud contact Britt introduced me to Fernando and I ended up staying here and helped Amory with waitressing because a party of National Geographic folks arrived on the same day and she made them lunch.

The campsite sits on a bluff above the confluence of Rio Puntra and Rio Grande, and in the middle you have a mass of marshland with dead tree stumps - it's a haven for an incredible number of bird species. I went kayaking at dawn in this sunken forest, created by a massive tidal wave that ran inland after the devastating earthquake of 1960, and it was an incredibly tranquil experience.

Fernando fills me in: they had to give away Luca, their excitable dog, because he loved people too much and would attempt to scramble into the kayaks with them. On one occasion, he stole a fat woman’s underwear from a tent and was chased around by her, much to the amusement of the other campers.

“The house was really empty without him for a while,” Amory adds. “But now we have a family of pudú (pygmy deer) that come every day.” They also have a family of cats that was here before, and a new addition that followed Amory home one day – a little white cat that isn’t half feral like the others. Blanquita hops onto my lap the minute I sit down on the porch, and then follows us around. I try to persuade them to adopt her as a pet.

The place is still looking the same, though I’m staying in a new en-suite little house that was still being built last time. Fernando tells me that their house burned down not too long ago - it was on a different plot of land – and that they lost everything in it. “What caused it?” “I don’t know,” he says, but his face darkens. Later, when he tells me about the things that some locals have been doing to sabotage their work, such as making it difficult for travellers to get here by having the bus stop a mile away, or telling them that their place is very expensive, or even putting up fake ‘Miradór’ signs at other places to stay, I wonder if he thinks that the fire may have been deliberate. Still, as he says, his attitude is different here from what it had been in Santiago; there, he may not have recovered from a loss like that, but here, it’s doable.

They’re on good terms with lots of locals, though – they buy fresh produce from them and send their guests their way to eat, as they don’t provide food (apart from the odd barbecue), they really passionate about protecting wildlife and Fernando shakes his head when he informs me that the nearby penguin colony is suffering because the local fishermen will drop anyone off there for a fee – people with children, with dogs – so the birds don’t feel safe, and the government environmental agency, Conaf, does nothing to protect them; there are no rules in place.

I love staying here; they are both such warm people, and a fantastic source of information. Amory looks like Meryl Streep, with wonderful laughter lines, a voice throaty from too many cigarettes, and an American accent, while Fernando’s English is more stilted, though fluent. When Amory sits at the computer to find something to show me, Fernando puts his arms around her and strokes her cheek. They’ve met late in life and are still very much in love.

I show them that they’re in the Lonely Planet and the Moon Handbook. They already know that they’re in the Rough Guide because I told them that I was going to put them in and someone’s given them a copy. Embarrassed to see that I made a typo and put their phone number in incorrectly (which the Moon Handbook then copied), but the website’s there and people have been calling to arrange for pickup from the main road, just as I’d instructed them.

For dinner, Amory produces some of the amazing smoked salmon done by a German woman who brought over German smoking equipment but uses local woods to achieve a unique flavour, but unfortunately she lives near Chacao, and orders have to placed in advance ever since the local salmon farm shut down after a major disease amongst the fish. Amory mentions the Lonely Planet writer who also stayed here. “He said to me: ‘Are you sure you want to be in the guide? Your life will change forever.’” It didn’t, but they have been getting more visitors because word has spread, they’re on various eco-websites and TripAdvisor.com. Where Lonely Planet’s influence has been detrimental, it’s where it suggests in the guide that Ancud’s not worth visiting, so most people go straight to Castro, and it’s really affecting local business in Ancud. That’s not terribly professional; the LP writer should’ve realised how detrimental such a comment would be. I, personally, may not like Castro, but I won’t tell people not to go there on the basis of my own prejudice; I would only advise so if a place is really grotty/dangerous. I tell them that I’ll see what I can do.

They are very enthusiastic about my future travels and Amory follows my perambulations on Facebook. They themselves haven’t moved from Chepu for the past five years, because there’s no one who can take care of their place – they would only entrust it to someone who is as passionate about nature as they are. “Unfortunately, Fernando’s children are all city people and they don’t care, and I’ve never had any kids,” Amory says.

We discuss Piñera and what his presidency means for Chile. They think that it’s a good thing, that twenty years in power led to great levels of corruption amongst the centre-left, and that he may try to reverse the damage done in the previous years, when the government managed to sell off the water rights to a Spanish hydro-electricity company, ENDESA. Piñera is encouraging businesses to invest in national assets and since he’s always been massively successful as a businessman, the hope is that he’ll run Chile equally efficiently.

Amory asks me if I’ve checked out ‘The World of Potato’ in Ancud. I’ve walked past it, but no. Apparently, it’s a really great eatery where most things (not everything) are made of the native Chiloé potatoes. I think I may have to stop in Ancud on the way back from Chepu tomorrow for that, and also to check out a church/museum which shows how the unique construction process of the Chiloé churches, which would help visitors to the island to understand what they’re looking at when they go and visit the actual churches. Amory and Fernando have also given me an idea about eco-tourism that I may look into further…

This is the third night that I’ve had alcohol with my meal. I fear I may be turning into a lush.

Debate going kayaking at dawn tomorrow, but the forecast is for rain, so I’ll play it by ear.