Things to Do in Castro, Chile

Quick facts: One of the 16 wooden churches of Chiloé inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, this log-built house of worship mimics Santiago cathedral with its facade. The entire structure is joined with wooden pegs and not a single nail, and its shingle-clad walls are painted bright yellow with purple accents.

Highlights: Massive exterior wooden buttresses hold the tall tower on several sides as if a bird were bracing against the ground with its wings. Touching the walls with your fingers, you feel the roughness of shingles smoothed by centuries, while inside lingers the scent of resin and history.

Quick facts: More than a hundred colorful houses stand on stilts above the water, their height depending on the tides, which here reach several meters. Each family painted its facade a different color so fishermen could recognize their own home from afar out at sea.

Highlights: When the tide rises, the lower platforms submerge and the houses seem to float, while at low tide muddy ground teeming with crabs appears beneath them. Fishermen still rule the first floors: nets dry there and dinner aromas drift through open windows, so the quarter stays alive even after tourists leave.

Quick facts: The walls of the old mill standing on stilts tell of grain ground here for more than a hundred years, and now contemporary sculptures hang among them. A wood art symposium held every two years brings master craftsmen from around the world into these halls, so with each visit you can discover something new.

Highlights: The best secret of this place lies in the floors: the outlines of the old mill's grain hoppers are still visible beneath the new coverings. On symposium days the windows are thrown wide open, chisels ring out, and the whole building fills with the smell of fresh wood that no one tries to hold back.

Quick facts: Beside the square stands a pinkish yellow wooden cathedral, one of the 16 UNESCO-protected wooden churches in the region. From the edge of the square you can see more than 300 houses built on stilts, called palafitos, in the bay.

Highlights: The cathedral walls are made of thousands of wooden shingles, and the damp air forces them to be repainted, so the church changes color more often than many others. From the stairs at the edge of the square the whole palafito quarter opens up, a view that turns into something entirely different in just a few hours at low tide.

Quick facts: Every day traders unload fresh oysters, mussels, and eels straight from boats onto wooden stalls. More than 60 vendors offer everything from seaweed to woolen sweaters, and the whole market sits on stilts above the water.

Highlights: In the afternoon the sounds of a local fiddle drift up from the second floor as artisans and musicians put on informal performances. At the corner of the stalls you will always find curanto, cooked on hot stones and covered with large leaves, from which a heady smell of smoke wafts.

Quick facts: The hill on which the viewpoint stands bears the name of the Spanish conquistador who founded this city in 1567. On a clear day, colorful houses on stilts spread out beneath your feet, while on the horizon beyond the fjord the mainland volcanoes line up.

Highlights: From here the whole old town looks like a colorful village floating on the water: houses on stilts line up directly beneath your feet, while the two yellow church bell towers poke above the rooftops. The evening sun paints the palafito facades blue, yellow, and red, and their reflections double on the surface of the fjord as the mainland volcanoes emerge on the horizon.

Quick facts: Here craftswomen spin and weave products from local wool, and a single shawl can bear up to 20 different colored patterns. The market operates daily, and the stalls are constantly bustling with locals and visitors from the surrounding islands.

Highlights: Just a few meters from the stalls, colorful houses stand on stilts, so as you buy a woolen blanket you see how the fishermen's quarter really lives. Watch how the craftswomen spin threads by hand on wooden spindles, threads from which traditional maritime patterns are born in just a few hours.

Quick facts: Half the park is lost in the damp Valdivian forest, while the other half opens onto wind-polished sand dunes by the ocean. Some alerce trees here have been alive for more than 3,600 years, making them older than many European cities.

Highlights: The wind-blown dunes of Cucao in the middle of a rainy forest look like a whim of nature: on one side roots embraced by moss, on the other an endless circle of sand. In the thickets lurks the pudu, the world's smallest deer, whose adult individual weighs less than ten kilograms.

Quick facts: The wooden pier stretches more than 400 meters over the bay, and beneath it the water level can rise several meters at high tide. At the end stands a bronze flock of sheep, where hundreds of people take photos every day, while old planks creak underfoot.

Highlights: At low tide, through the gaps between the planks you can see how sharp wooden piles are driven into the mud and how sea stars and snails have settled on them. Most interesting of all, it is not just the pier that stands on stilts here, but also colorful residential houses, whose owners still fish directly through their windows.