Visiting Berta´s Family on Isla Lemuy, Chiloé

A couple of weekends ago, the two of us, along with our German traveling friend Niklas, were invited to Berta´s family reunion on her home island of Lemuy. Berta works in the hostel we are staying at in Castro, and we had gotten to know her during our first week there. Still, the invitation to go to her parents´ home for the weekend was an amazing surprise to us. She had only known us for five days or so and we were really astounded by the generosity that she and her family showed us. We had been spending a lot of time talking about the culture and history of Chiloé with her and her mother-in-law, Maria, the owner of our hostel. So, I guess we had shown ourselves to be interested and excited about Chiloé and willing to make fools of ourselves by speaking Spanish badly. So, we happily accepted the offer to visit her home and her family. We did not really understand before we went to the island of Lemuy (by bus, taxi, ferry and pick-up truck) that this was actually a huge family reunion for Berta´s family. All six of her siblings and nieces and nephews and bother-in-laws etc. had all come back home to the little town of Puqueldón for the weekend for a great big family reunion, and we were invited to join in the festivities! Berta´s parents had recently purchased a small plot of land just outside the town of Puqueldón (a short ten minute walk from their house) and were in the process of constructing a cabin and gardening and planting trees in preparation for moving there. Their plan is to rent out their house in town and live up on the hill above the town with a beautiful view of the bay. When we arrived in Lemuy by ferry, Berta´s father picked us up in his truck and we zoomed off to the new parcel of land for a huge barbecue. The men all rode in the back of the truck, as there were about 8 or 9 of us.

Here is a picture of their cabin on their new land.

When Berta´s parents bought the land outside of town, they also bought a goat to be a pet and keep everyone company. His name is Wilson, from the movie Castaway, which we have not seen but everyone in Chiloé has. (Even here, we know less about American pop culture than everyone else.) Wilson´s main function seemed to be providing everyone with entertainment and a topic of conversation, and the whole family loved yelling, "WIL-SON!!" at him. He was not very smart for a little goat and kept getting himself tangled up in his rope. In the above photo Ryan is helping him untangle himself and Wilson is busy making as much noise as a goat can make and trying to flail around and kick.

The barbecue that we had is called an asado and is a very traditional event in Argentina and Chile. They slowly cook lots of meat on a big stick over a big bed of coals. The barbecue pit is called a pancho and was constructed from a metal barrel split down the middle and welded together. I think Berta´s father made it, but I wasn´t quite sure about the explanation. We arrived just shortly before the feast was served but we did get to see some of the preparation methods:Here is the asado (the beef in the big pot) and the pollo (chicken), which takes less time to cook, and was still on the stick when we arrived.One of Berta´s brothers-in-law, a teacher at the grade school in the town of Achao, was in charge of the asado. Here he is removing the chicken from the stick. One of Berta´s nieces is next to him and a sister is in the background. The chicken was so amazingly flavorful with the taste of the cypress and beech trees that were burned in the fire.In this photo, one of Berta´s brothers-in-law and her father are basting the asado with a sprig that they broke off a tree.Preparing for the feast. Here we are eating. There was so much wonderful food. Everything come from Lemuy, the beef, the chicken, the potatoes, the beets, the tomatoes, the lettuce, everything but the soda and the wine. Of course, at first we felt somewhat strange accepting all this delicious food and hospitality and friendship from people we really didn´t know at all, but before long we were very comfortable. They made us feel right at home and since we were all interested in learning about each other´s cultures and lives we had lots to talk about. Everyone here in South America and especially in Berta´s family has been so helpful and patient with our Spanish skills. Talking with people who want to help you learn is the very best way to become better at speaking. By the end of the weekend Ryan was speaking a little and understanding much more Spanish, although he did have a pretty massive headache after 36 hours of intense language immersion.

Here is Berta´s family´s house in the town of Puqueldón. Everything was so short inside that Ryan and Niklas (who is two meters tall, and feels like a giant clown sometimes here) had to duck under the doorways, stairways, and ceiling lights. Over the next night and day, we returned here a few times to eat more wonderful meals. The red pick-up on the right is the family vehicle.

During the asado party, we were discussing our respective cultural beverages, and the topic of hard cider came up. Apparently, hard cider is one of the many cultural commonalities between Chiloé and New England that we discovered (also a love of potatoes, fish and shellfish). Here they call it chicha, and they make it from the local apples that grow in all the fields and yards, and they ferment it for about a year in whatever they have lying around. As soon as we expressed some interest in the chicha, they said we could get some right then. So, we piled into the back of the pickup and drove to a little run-down cabin with a strange guy and a lot of mean dogs. Berta´s sister told us not to get out of the car until she had asked through the window if the dogs would bite us. It was straight out of Appalachia. The man was really nice, though, and he siphoned some chicha for us out of these weird-looking iron shells into an old soda bottle. Then we took it back to the party and drank it all up. Grand.

Here is Berta (second from the right) with her three sisters that night at the asado party.
Here we are with our German friend Niklas and Berta´s parents.

After the asado party, at about twelve-thirty, all the young folks started to talk about going to the discotheque. The discotheque?? On a rural island of only four-thousand people spread out into nine villages connected by dirt tracks? There is a discotheque? Yes. Actually, there are two discotheques on Lemuy. So we all piled into the pickup and drove to their house in town, where we drank coffee and had snacks and argued about the relative advantages of the two discotheques, and finally went out to dance. The young folks even convinced their parents to come out until past four in the morning. Here are a few of the family dancing:

That night we slept in tents in the yard of their country cabin. In the morning, we chilled out in the sun on the homemade lawn furniture, made by Berta´s mother, who is also named Berta. Berta is a much prettier sounding name in Spanish than in English.Here I am back at their town house with one of the nephews in the back yard. The dog is Yanko.
After breakfast, Berta´s parents took us on a tour of the island. We bought them some petrol, since it is so very expensive, and this is how they filled up the truck, with an old wine jug and a funnel made from a cut soda bottle. During the tour, we saw a bunch of cute towns, much beautiful countryside, Berta´s grandmother´s house and wheat farm, and a number of beautiful wooden churches described in our iglesia post. Here we are collecting some apples for the ride. This was in Detif, where Berta´s father told us some myths about the Trauco troll that lives near this town. He also said that he once saw the phantom ship of pure gold sailing around Lemuy.

Before we went back to Castro we took a walk around Puqueldón. They have these amazingly large rhubarb-like plants here called nalcas.Ryan in the back of the pick-up truck on the way to the ferry to go back to Castro:

Some of us posed for this picture as we waited for the ferry to arrive (that´s it in the background). Berta´s mother was sad to have all her children scattered to their different homes again.
On the ferry back to the isla grande.



The weekend was an amazing success! We learned so much about Chiloé and the Chilote people. When we got back to Castro we worked hard writing a thank you note in Spanish to Berta´s parents and family. Apparently they liked it, because the next week they sent us two homemade baskets made for us by her mother and youngest sister. They are beautiful and too precious to carry with us all through South America so we sent them back to Maine.