Hospedaje Su Casa, Los Alerces 841, www.chiloe.cl/sucasa, hospedajesucasa@gmail.com, Highly recommended!!Chiloé, an island off the coast of southern Chile, immediately reminded Laura and me of a small New England town. The climate was sunny and cool, the people friendly,
the ocean close and the scenery incredible. We arrived to Chiloé by a short ferry ride. While crossing, we saw several sea lions and luckily just as a little girl burst into tears, "Buuuut daddy, I want to see a dolphin!!!" we saw one.We spent most of our time in Ancud, a city in the north of Chiloé.
When we arrived to Ancud, the usual hostal search began. A man approached us and energetically tried to convince us to go with him to his hostal... several times, but his insistence turned us away and we refused his offer... seeeveral times. We continued going from hostal to hostal asking for a room to no avail.
Everything was full, but one lady made a few calls for us, found a place and told us someone was on their way to pick us up.Who pulled up?? Same guy. "Ha haa! I knew it," he proclaimed. Laura and I were embarrassed, but we had no choice other than to go with him.
Su Casa turned out to be the best hostal we'd ever been in. His wife was very nice and personable, the house immaculate, and the breakfast overflowing with kuchen. We did catch one rainy day in Ancud, but we were more than happy to stay in our comfy room with cable TV and our usual art projects.
We spent a day exploring Ancud from one end to the other; an old Spanish fort, equipped with cannons, a peaceful look-out point, a small rocky beach. We collected sea glass and other junky treasures and stopped to chat with an old painter who although said, he'd be making room for another painter in the world soon, still had a youthful glimmer in his eye when he told stories about his past.Ancud seemed to be full of funny characters, which we later discovered was
because a Chilean circus convention was being held that weekend. We had the chance to see a free concert hosted by clowns and including various musical groups. We particularly enjoyed the tuba, accordion, tambourine trio rocking out gypsy music (hep hep hep!) and Mandrago who brought down the house with English, Canadian and Irish folk music, among other things. The girl sung so beautifully in English that we were shocked to find out that she wasn't a gringa. She sure fooled us!
We also took a day trip a little further south to Casto, the capital of Chiloé, which was having the annual Festival Custombrista showcasing Chiloé's traditions. We saw demonstrations on how to build a boat, make apple chica (liquor), de-wool a sheep (not sure what the technical term for that would be) and put on a horseshoe. All things 
that will be very useful in our future...We of course made our rounds, eating; our favorite thing being chochoca (mashed potatoes flattened and rolled with meat in the middle.) We sat for a while and watched a fashion show that had real women (not super models)
showing off the simple but elegant, cream colored, linen, Chiloé fashion. This was followed by traditional music such as the cueca (cousin to the salmacueca, a Peruvian rhythm and dance, but less interesting) and a group of 4 accordion players which seemed like too many (if you ask our opinion).
We left Chiloé content that we got to see something really beautiful during our time in Chile. Unfortunately the city leading to the border crossing we'd originally planned was annihilated 6 months ago in a volcanic eruption and days before we were about to cross the volcano had woken up with a few firey burps. So we needed to take 
another route. We discovered to our despair that we would have to go back to Osurno, an unattractive, dirty, commercial city, for the third time. (We had to stop there to get to Frutillar and then got stuck there for a full day while trying to get out of Frutillar.) But we had no choice, so we bit the bullet and hopped on a bus to Osurno. From there it was smooth sailing right to Bariloche, Argentina
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