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November 7


swans 1

swans 2
Black-necked swans off the shore of Quinchao

View from high on Quinchao We took a ferry from the east coast of the main island of Chiloé to the much smaller island of Quinchao. This is a view (big image; small) from a high point on Quinchao over the Gulf of Ancud. In the distance, out in the bay, you can see floats that are used in salmon farming. In the foreground, the yellow-flowered plant is gorse. Up to this time, I had avoided taking pictures that would include this plant, a tough and thorny member of the pea family, which must be one of the world’s worst environmental disasters wherever it’s introduced. Avoiding gorse in your pictures is hard to do in the Chilean Lakes District, though, because you see it everywhere there, in addition to another introduced weed, the dandelion. I saw there in the woods one other invasive European plant, Planetree Maple, which we also had in Providence, and which our lawns and gardens were full of every spring. The German settlers planted gorse as a natural fence, to keep their sheep from wandering, but they had no way of keeping the gorse itself from spreading throughout the area.

View from high on Quinchao In this picture (big image; small), we’re walking downward along the road you see in the foreground of the previous picture. Gorse on both sides! You get a better view of the floats for salmon farming in this picture, too.

Araucaria 1 Araucaria 2 In the left picture (big image; small), Mark, Sandy, and Johan are prominent in the foreground, while a very vigorous monkeypuzzle tree takes the background. In the right (big image; small), we’re walking through the streets of Achao, the main town of Quinchao, with a tall but sparser tree in the background.

Ferry view 1 Ferry view 2 Ferry view 1 Ferry view 2
Two views (first: big, small; second: big, small) from the ferry, as we were going back from Quinchao to the mainland of Chiloé. Then two sky shots (third: big, small; fourth: big, small) from Chiloé after we had landed. We wound up in the town of Castro, which had plenty of things to photograph, but mostly I didn’t. There was a covered market that Mark and I wandered through, but didn’t buy anything at, even though there were some really interesting sweaters for sale there. It was here in Castro, in the town square, that Ingrid Schönherr bought a stalk of Gunnera for us to try.

I’ll close this page with a shot of a historical marker in the town square of Castro that commemorates the founder of the town.
Gamboa memorial

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