Sunday Night after Chiloe

They told the Plotniks, when they were in Santiago, that when they got to the South the fish would be spectacular, and nobody was lying. Plot and Duck just walked back to Casa Kalfu, along the dark lake amongst many Chileans and visiting Argentinians who all seem to be used to eating dinner at 11pm, and the congrio from Northern Chile that they just ate was every bit as delicious as the kingclip in 2004 in South Africa, and that is truly saying something.

That makes three spectacular fish meals in a row, with this afternoon's barbecued sheep kebab sandwiched in there between them.

First came the salmon, yesterday afternoon at the Restaurant Reloj by the plaza, and last night the amazing corvina at the Ibis, with the volcano blinking its white-capped eye over the dining table every fifteen minutes or so, and late tonight the buttery congrio at the Buenas Brasas, all three fishes grilled over wood and served with a simple sauce, tonight's with butter and capers. Here you pay for the fish, and then you pay for the sauce, and then for anything else you want, and it's not Mexico, but it's not the U.S. or Europe either.

But these picture aren't of fish, are they? It's all lamb. Only lamb.



In Chile you eat a small breakfast in the morning, toast and maybe a slice or two of cheese, and some too-sweet yogurt, and a cup of coffee, and probably a piece of raspberry kuchen. Then you go about your business until well into the afternoon, when you sit down for a meal at around two or three. This means that you're not ready for the cena, or super, until nine or ten, or tonight eleven o'clock since Plot and Duck walked first to the plaza in Puerto Varas where there was a live salsa band to listen to, before finding the Buenas Brasas restaurant.

This was after a long day. Early this morning a combi van with a young and beautiful Chilean guide named Jastra, picked Plot and Duck up at the Kalfu at 8am for the trip to the island of Chiloe, the home of the Mapuche tribe who held off the Spanish successfully for hundreds of years. This island is an hour's drive down the two lane road to a pier, and a half hour ferry from the mainland, and then you get back into the bus and keep driving.



It is usually cold and rainy on Chiloe, which has an accent on the last e so it is pronounced chee-lo-A, but today was the rare hot and sunny exception. It also turned out that today was the last day of the two day once-a-year- Costumbrista Fiesta de Chiloe, a kind of craft fair and county fair put together. Everbody in town and every town on the island was there, along with a lot of tourists and families from the mainland.

No English, no Americans. A few Brazilians, lots of Argentinians. Americans must be going somewhere else except the island of Chiloe.

It had been raining for the previous week, so the grounds were pure mud, but you slogged through it and got to the individual stands, where you could watch the men barbecuing joints of baby lamb on enormous spits over asados of hard wood, and the woman preparing the hard-to-imagine chochocas.



A chochoca starts out as a dough of flour and potatoes.. It is patted onto huge rolling pins, four feet long and two inches round, and sometimes the dough falls off the pin onto the coals, but eventually the rolling pin is full and it is placed over a pit with wood embers banked below, until the bread is browned on one side.



Then, it is somehow removed from the wood, laid flat on the table and pork chicharones are spooned onto the uncooked side.



Then the whole bread-and-pork concoction is rolled up like a very, very thick tortilla. it ends up looking more like a thick sweet roll than a savory dish, but they serve it either by itself (600 pesos - a dollar-twenty ) or with a giant chunk of barbecued lamb.

Plotnik tried one of those very greasy chochocas after he and Duck each had a lamb kebab skewer with very tender pieces of lamb next to almost inedibly tough pieces of lamb next to sausage-y pieces and also grilled onions.



The chochoca was...well, it wasn't great, but it grew on ya.

Then they walked to the next stand, whose operators were selling the same stuff, with their own asados, and chochorra mills, and their own ladies working preparing the stuff and everyone buying as much of everything as they could stuff into their mouths.

There were also local artesanial chocolatiers. Yup. Great stuff too.

There were local wool products -- sweaters, gloves, caps etc., but the style of weaving on Chiloe is so coarse that Duck only bought two things -- both for you, Beezy Weezy. Plot found his obligatory smoked chile so he's got three packets which should last until 2049.

They did have bbq salmon as well, but the Chilotos seemed to be selling 90% lamb, 8% pork and 2% salmon. People walked and ate and talked and used their fingers to emphasize everything, all while stuffing down a huge chochoca, and everyone's feet got covered in mud, and the gigantic communal curanto barbecue ended up in a pile of clam and oyster shells.

Plot snoozed in the sunny combi going home, and then it was time to wash out some clothes and get ready to go dancing.

There wasn't any dancing, as it turned out -- 'way too many people in the street and the band too far away. But there was great fish and there will probably be a lot more in days to come.