Meals – Part 2

Ok, just a quick note here.  The computer I am using does not seem to have an apostrophe on its keyboard, so this post might sound a little more stilted than usual.

Now, on to the food.

Puerto Varas:  Enjoyed the German influence here.  Ate the most amazing apple strudel.  It was so dense and syrupy, it reminded me of baklava.  I still have dreams about it.

Chiloe:  Seafood.  So much seafood that I actually got tired of it.  I had a few curantos, which are pretty cool.  Traditionally cooked in a pit in the ground filled with coals, but normally just steamed in a big pot, it is a big mess of food.  On a platter you get a bunch of mussels (maybe about 20), some clams (maybe about 10-15), some chicken, ribs, sausage, potatoes, and a couple of “breads” – discs of potato and flour that get steamed with the rest of the stuff.  Pretty tasty and damn filling.

Argentina:  It is all about the beef.  Argentines eat an insane amount of it.  More than any other country, per capita.  150 lbs. per person every year.  I had some of the best steak I have ever eaten.  Completely sublime.  And cheap.  For 10 bucks you get a gorgeous chunk of meat, 4 or 5 inches across and at least 2 inches thick (at least!).

Argentina has received a lot of Italian immigrants over the years, and they brought with them their expertise with  gelato, although now it is referred to in Spanish – helado.  Some of the stuff I tried was a revelation, almost a religious experience with light shining down from the heavens and angels singing.  Banana with dulce de leche.  I always avoid banana flavoured ice cream because it is usually bright yellow and completely artificial.  This was a true banana grey and tasted like sweet, ripe bananas with swirls of gooey dulce de leche.  Merengueche – dulce de cleche flavoured ice cream with chunks of meringue.  Seeing a trend here?  Dulce de leche flavours constitute a whole category unto themselves in Argentina.  I do not like chocolate ice cream – it does not really do chocolate any justice – but I had chocolate helado that was dense and chewy.  Amazing.  And while Chile is nowhere near the Argentine level of helado expertise, I did discover a great pizza/helados place in Santiago that had some great flavours.  One of my favourites was harina tostada – literally toasted flour, semolina in this case.  It was sort of like a slightly nutty cream of wheat.  A nice contrast to the sweeter flavours.

Ancud (again)

Returned back to Ancud for a couple of days.  I took in another 35 km ride, this time to a quiet beachfront restaurant renowned for its oysters.

Now, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of oysters.  The first time I ever ate them I was at an office party where, combined with copious amounts of wine, the contents of my stomach wanted to get up close and personal with the party and decided to join the festivities…at the table.  A little embarrassing.  It was years before I decided to take another go at them.  Round two was ok – no food was regurgitated.  But nothing special either.  I think I’m just not a fan.  So I was going to this restaurant more out of duty than with giddy anticipation.

I bet a fan of oysters would have found them delightful.  I merely found them sort of interesting.  My conversion to the cult of the oyster must wait for another time.

Here’s a look at my platter.

The restaurant was on a beautiful calm beach, where some people were digging for shellfish.  At other times of the year you can see flamingos here.

And the 35 kms on the bike just about killed me again.

Welcome to Chilanada…or is that Canloe?

I seem to stumble upon an inordinate number of weird Canadian references while on this island of Chiloe.  In addition to the plentiful helping of Bryan Adams on the radio, I heard Black Velvet by Allanah Myles the other day.  I didn’t think I’d ever hear that song again!  (And I wish I never did – the damn thing was stuck in my head the rest of the day).  I also saw a guy wearing a t-shirt commemorating the Erie County (NY) Special Olympics from some time in the ’80s (hey, Erie County is close enough to Canada).  Then there was the shop window that had a bunch of insignia patches for sale.  Amid the selection was a facsimile of the NWT license plate.  And then to top it all off, as I’m sitting in a waterfront seafood restaurant, I look up to see an official photo of then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and her husband, John Ralston Saul.  I was starting to get a little freaked out.

And now that I think of it, I remember seeing a baseball hat in a used clothing shop in Santiago that had a patch on it advertising some flight operation named after Billy Bishop.  Is there some sort of secret Canadian underground here?

Castro

After staying in Ancud I moved on to Castro, the capital of the island.  It’s a bigger town and it’s obvious there’s a bit more money flowing here.  The plaza is new and nicely landscaped.  There’s a bit more hustle and bustle.  But something left me rather cold, and I did not find the place as endearing as Ancud.

I’m beginning to realize that corrugated metal is a major building material for the island.  Even important buildings are clad in metal, sometimes with designs pressed into it.  But in an environment where it rains most of the time, metal begins to look a little worn and tatty.  Case in point: the cathedral in Castro.  It looks horrible (granted it’s not getting much help by the colour scheme of the paint job).

Inside, however, it’s got a beautiful varnished wood interior.  If I ignore the crazy bleeding crucifixes it’s quite peaceful.

Mar Brava

While in Ancud I hopped on the bike and followed a route the hostel recommended to check out the rugged west coast of the island.  The destination was a beach called Mar Brava.  The trip was about 35 km, and it just about killed me.  It became painfully clear that I was really out of shape.

About half the distance was on unpaved road.  Unpaved roads down here are nothing like the gravel roads of Southern Ontario.  Instead of being covered in gravel they are covered in rocks that range in size between golf balls and baseballs.  This type of surface really likes to shift around under bicycle tires.  It sort of feels like you´re riding on a bunch of large marbles.

Oh, and to add to my lack of fitness and the challenging road conditions, I forgot to bring any money with me.  I departed with about 500 ml of water and a package of cookies.  That was all the nourishment for the day.  I think I was a little delerious by the end.

But there was a payoff for all this hard work.  Mar Brava was absolutely stunning. 

First there was the beautiful rolling farmland that I had to travel through to get to the coast.

 

Milk jugs were all along the side of the road waiting to be picked up.

I eventually crested a hill and saw before me a wide sandy beach with Pacific waves rolling in.

When I got to the bottom of the hill there was a narrow road which ran to the right, hugging the coast.

And then, around the corner, a rocky point that you could scamper onto to get close to the waves crashing in.  There was also another beach further along, but I was wearing Birkenstock sandals and the loose pebble surface was too difficult to walk too far on.

And the best thing: after spending over an hour exploring about 3 km of coastline I met only four people.  Most of the time I had the whole place to myself.

Ancud

Ancud is on the north coast of Chiloe. It´s one of the two major cities on the island (Castro´s the other – we´ll get there later). About 27,000 people live here. Buildings are clad either in traditional wooden shingles (sometimes painted bright colours) or sheets of corrugated metal (often painted as well). Rain is usually a constant feature of life here (except this year, there´s a drought) and this seems to wear considerably on the exteriors. Copious amounts of rusting sheet metal sometimes made me feel like I was in a shanty town.

That being said, the place really grows on you. Especially when you´ve got a nice place to lay your head at the end of the day. The Hostal Mundo Nuevo is a really nice hostel with a beautiful view of the ocean.  I spent a few days here doing not much of anything.

Being an island in the Pacific, fish and shellfish are ubiquitous. Veggies, not so much (except for the potato, which some scholars believe originated here). It was a struggle to find any vegetables on a menu, and when I visited the many supermarkets and produce stands, the quality of what was on offer was horrible. It was not uncommon to see produce on display that was mouldy or rotten. A fellow traveller at the hostel who works in agriculture in Germany thought it was because they probably did not have any refrigerated transportation for the crops. Either way, I have no idea how Chilotes get their vitamins.

And El Trauco? Well, I only found him rocking out on the flyer for a local metal show.

 

I love the totally amateur presentation. And Leprosy is one of the best names for a metal band ever.  I also think it´s pretty funny that a band named themselves after Homer´s favourite brew.

Shakedown Breakdown

Here I am on a 3 month long bike tour, on the other side of the world, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize the effects of breaking one of the cardinal rules of bike touring – I have not done any sort of shakedown tour.

Basically, a shakedown tour is a short trip prior to a long tour that allows you to test out all your gear under actual conditions.  If something’s not working right, or the way you’ve got things set up is wrong, it’s better that it happen on a short journey than an epic one.

So no shakedown tour.  And did I mention that I’ll be riding a brand new bike…with brand new luggage and racks?  And this bike is not your typical touring bike, but what some might consider a circus bike – it’s a folder with BMX sized wheels.  Oh, and I haven’t been on a bike (or physically active, for that matter) in at least three months.  This is going to be fun.

So I get to Santiago, unpack everything and start to load the bike up.  Well, it doesn’t take long for me to realize that something’s got to give, and it better be me and my plans.  One of the main bags I’m planning to use doesn’t attach to the racks in a sufficiently solid way and thus shimmies and shakes like an out of control bowl of jello.  Not good when riding carefully on a short distance of smooth pavement; downright dangerous when half of your planned route consists of rough dirt road.  It´s got to go.  OK, that’s about 30% of my carrying capacity eliminated, and my luggage was already bursting.  So, 30% of my gear has to get cut as well.  It can’t be clothing because I only brought the bare minimum, so out goes the camping gear.  Oh, and that part of my tour that consists of rough dirt road, that represents about half of my planned trip, absolutely needs camping gear.  All of a sudden half of why I came down here has been eliminated.  I was numb, in shock.  I wandered the streets of Santiago for a while trying to wrap my head around it and in the end couldn’t.  I went to sleep not knowing what to do.

The ability to adapt is an important skill to have in life, and it definitely comes in handy when you´re on the road.  The only thing that´s guaranteed is the fact that your plans won´t go exactly as planned.  So it was with this mindset that I awoke the next day and realized there was no way around it, my plans just had to change.  The other half of my original planned trip was to visit the island of Chiloe, off the north coast of Chilean Patagonia.  I think I would still be able to bicycle around the island without needing camping gear – distances between towns were far more manageable.

So it´s off to Chiloe – land of constant rain, potatoes, and mythological figures like El Trauco, a supremely ugly dwarf who has incredible strength, carries a tiny stone hatchet with which he can chop down trees with a single blow, and possesses such sublime lovemaking abilities that young virgins find him irresistible.  I´m not making any of this up.