Isla Lemuy: The third largest of Chiloe's islands is exceptionally pretty and largely untouched

Text | Anninka Kraus
Photography | Tobias Kraus

Argentina Lagos (Chiloe)

After spending a few days in Pucon, we were excited for our next destination: Isla Lemuy, the third largest of Chiloé’s islands.

The bus to the seaport of Puerto Montt and further to Pargua, 60 kilometres southwest of Puerto Montt, departed Pucon in the early morning. Pargua is located on the Chacao Channel that separates the Chiloé Archipalego, a group of some forty islands off the west coast of Chile, from the mainland in the north.

After a short ferry ride across the channel we embarked on another bus ride across Isla Grande de Chiloé, the largest island of the archipelago where yearly precipitation fluctuates between 2.000mm and 4000mm.

If you have no idea how much 4000mm of rain in a year actually means (I don’t, except that it sounds frightening) compare it to barely 600mm in Berlin, 1200mm in New York, 600mm in London (I thought they had notoriously bad weather?), and 1300mm in Sydney (maybe I don’t want to move there after all). Why, you may ask, would we spend a whole day on road (and water) to reach depressingly wet isolation in the middle of nowhere?

It’s a very valid question indeed and one that I pondered myself on another fifteen-minute ferry crossing to Isla Lemuy, a tiny speck of land southeast off Castro on Isla Grande but is easily answered. The rural islands are exceptionally pretty and largely untouched and unspoiled by tourism. I cannot in fact recall seeing any other tourists on Isla Lemuy. Also, it only rained on one day out of three, on the other two it was all blue skies and bright sunshine.

related | Explore Puerto Varas and embark on a Road Trip around Lago Llanquihue

Fisherman boats dotting the sea against the backdrop of Isla Lemuy.

what to expect.

Explore the third largest of Chiloe’s islands, which is exceptionally pretty and largely untouched, Isla Lemuy

It rains a lot, but when it doesn’t, the lush green landscape of windswept, undulating hills dotted with blazing buttercups and gorse of the same colour in full bloom is beautiful

All the locals we met on Chiloé, mostly fishermen and farmers, were genuinely nice and helpful

Spend at least a day exploring the iconic churches of Chiloé, built of local wood and adorned with the wooden shingles that Chiloé Archipelago is famous for, many of them inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Sites

The iconic Churches of Chiloé

Our Italian Airbnb hosts, Silvio and Rosanna, fell in love with Chile, its remoteness and genuineness, some years ago (and succeeded in picking a very remote spot in Chile itself), they explained, retired from their restaurant business an hour out of Venice and opened their simple, cosy home on Isla Lemuy to Airbnb guests.

Their disarming, infectious smiles fitted Chile as well as Italy, and I could well understand their decision to spend the summer months in either country respectively and skip winter altogether.

And how lucky were we to share dinner with Italian cooks, even more so stuck on Isla Lemuy, an island that counts less than a handful of restaurants if any. Our contribution to dinner was negligible, but it turned out I have an exceptional talent for feeding thinly rolled sheets of pasta into an ancient wooden pasta maker of Rosanna’s grandmother and form spaghetti.

As would be expected, the abundant rain, once it stopped, revealed a lush green landscape of windswept, undulating hills dotted with blazing buttercups and gorse of the same colour in full bloom gleaming in the sun. Gorse is as much a hazard to the local flora as in New Zealand, we learned from Silvio, and ever-present on the islands as was the lingering slightly salty-fishy smell of the sea.

Villages on Isla Lemuy were tiny and few, cars a rare sight, and grazing horses and sheep generously scattered across the meadows. The people of Chiloé are hardworking farmers working the fields and fishermen and farmers heading back to shore in battered fishing boats as colourful as the houses of Valparaiso or those sitting on stilts along the Chiloé waterfront, surrounded by screeching sea gulls.

Our hosts offered excursions to the iconic churches of Chiloé, built of local wood and adorned with the wooden shingles that also deck many private homes, that Chiloé Archipelago is famous for, many of them inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and we spent a full day visiting these structures that always appeared quite unexpected behind a hill in this rural area. They were wonderfully unpretentious compared to pompous, palatial churches we have visited in Europe, especially their modest interiors.