Simon says

The inland lake at Chiloe National Park March 8-12:  It's always fun to arrive somewhere in the dark and then wake up the next morning to be dazzled by the new.  Rarely more so than in Castro on Chiloe Island where we had rented a palafito: a house on stilts.  The whole house is out over the water but entering from the street you would not know it.  We had a delightful balcony with views across the estuary, up and down the line of other palafitos along the waterfront, and of the many birds doing their thing.   Looking up the estuary from our deck The sun rising over our palafito balcony Room with a view Our kingfisher friend We made it outside for one dinner once the rain let up This is how you build a palafito Castro is one of Chile's oldest towns, a higgledy-piggledy mass of buildings hugging the steep hillsides overlooking the port.  Nestled quite improbably amongst this ecletic mix of tumbledowns, is a sparkling new five-storey shopping mall, muted...

Boarding the Chaiten-Castro ferry March 4-12  The Carreterra Austral highway begins in Puerto Montt and runs 1240km to Villa O'Higgins in southern Patagonia.  As far as I am aware, it is not possible to continue on from Villa O'Higgins towards Puerto Natales because the mountains of Torres del Paine are in the way.  Therefore to drive the length of Chile you must take a dip into Argentina, and this detour starts well before O'Higgins.   At home in the car Not a problem for us as we were only planning to drive the first 240km of the highway, much of which is actually on ferries, before taking another ferry west to connect back to Chiloe island.  A map?  Sure... Having left Puerto Varas on Friday morning, we drove through Puerto Montt to join the Carreterra and continue the 40 mins on to our first ferry, crossing the Reloncavi estuary from La Arena to Puelche.  We stopped along the way to take a walk in the Alerce Adino National Park, a pleasant 3km...