Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [60]
Chilotans have lived off seafood since Darwin’s time. Darwin specifically mentioned their corrales, underwater hedges used to trap fish at low tide, although Don Carlos told us that modernized fishing techniques have mostly eliminated the traps. As Josh and I passed along the shore at low tide we saw colorful yellow-and-red fishing boats resting on the sand, waiting for a high tide to come and float them. Chiloé didn’t seem to have much of a commercial fleet, just a collection of small sixteen-foot wood-plank private boats, to be used whenever someone got hungry. Don Carlos had spent nearly ten minutes explaining to us how to make the island’s specialty food, so after visiting the museum we went to sample curanto, a dish of mussels, clams, potato-and-flour cakes, and small slices of pork. We chose a restaurant overlooking the wharf, on a street painted by Martens in 1834. He had captured a dirt street and two-story wooden houses; now, convenience stores, restaurants, and a Goodyear tire shop, mostly built with concrete and corrugated metal, lined the paved route. I ordered the curanto and Josh ordered a salmon ceviche. “I think we’re basically breaking the first two huge rules of eating abroad,” Josh said as the waiter brought out my steaming plate of shellfish. “Mussels and raw fish—it could be a long night.”
It wasn’t. Soothed by the rhythm of a torrential downpour on our tin roof, we went to sleep early and woke up the next morning refreshed and ready for a hike.
On their first trip to the island, after a few weeks in Ancud, the Beagle’s crew had seen enough of winter in Chiloé. On July 13, the ship weighed anchor and tried to beat its way out into the Pacific against a rough swell. “We were all glad to leave Chiloé; at the time of year nothing but an amphibious animal could tolerate the climate,” Darwin wrote in his diary. But, characteristically optimistic, he looked forward to returning: “In summer, when we return, I dare say Chiloé will wear a more cheerful look.”
He proved prophetic. When the Beagle returned in November, “the island wore quite a pleasing aspect, with the sun shining brightly on the patches of cleared ground & dusky green woods.” After two months of survey work around the islands, Darwin set off on a trip to the rain-battered west coast of Chiloé, riding for Cucao, then and now the only inhabited part of the island’s west coast. Josh and I trailed along on an early morning bus. It rattled along on a winding gravel road, bumping past farmhouses and fields. We passed a massive commercial salmon farming operation called “Salmon Net” and then along the shore of a large lake.
A long cement bridge connected Cucao with the road to the rest of the island. A few closed-and-shuttered restaurants, including one called the “Darwin Rest Stop” were scattered around the entrance to the Chiloé National Park, which covered much of the coastline between Cucao and Ancud to the north. Josh and I hopped off at the park headquarters and hiked out toward the ocean, crossing a stile over a barbed-wire fence.
As we walked, the thick, dark forest faded into a series of sloping gray dunes dotted with scrubby low bushes and reedy, tough clumps of grass. Heavy clouds took most of the color out of the vegetation, rendering everything in shades of gray. The weather seemed indecisive, unsure whether to rain or not, overcast skies misting and dripping but never pouring or drying up. I mentioned this to Josh and he disagreed. “It looks pretty decidedly overcast to me,” he grumbled.
I didn’t expect much of a welcome from the water. Darwin had written of the “terrible surf ” which on stormy days could be heard at night from Castro, twenty miles away. Arriving where we now walked, he rode north a l i ttle and then abandoned the pursuit in the face of impenetrable forest and rugged coastline, “fronted