second destination

after waking up at 6:45 am at our hostel in Castro and walking up a fat hill to the bus terminal (that we all thought would be a good preview of what backpacking through Torres del Paine would be like - looking back, this hill was a cake walk) to catch our early bus to Ancud in northern Chiloe, from where we would have to figure out how to get to Chepu by early afternoon

we got to the bus station before the dogs had awoken

while waiting, i led some early morning stretching exercises

the bus from Castro to Ancud was very wet and magical,

and by that i'm referring to rainbows

we found the other end!

 once in Ancud we discovered that there are absolutely no buses that go to Chepu (which made complete sense once we experienced the bumpy and narrow dirt road), so we vouched for a taxi. our friend Catalina whose dad is from Chiloe helped us negotiate with a taxi driver, who found us a guy with a van to take all 7 of us at once

one of the taxis waiting outside the terminal - zip tied tires to the rim. fool proof. 

i made friends with this dog i like to call Fang

i unsuccessfully tried to get him to take me to Hagrid

this didn't look quite like a raper van, so we figured it was ok to get in

on our way to Chepu!

the next hour we spent going up and down unpaved roads and listening to traditional Chilean music on the radio, which made the experience seem like a perfect adventure

for me, this ride was probably my favorite out of the whole trip. the area we drove through was extremely rural, full of cows, farms, beehives, and environmentally-minded signs that said things like "más cultura, menos basura" - more culture, less trash - and "cuidar al medio ambiente, es muy inocente" -take care of the environment, it's very innocent

beehives! i loved all the colorful boxes

at one point we had to wait for this tractor to move some dirt around

but eventually we arrived to Chepu Adventures!

[keelin, mario, roshel, me, natalie, rachael, jules]
with our awesome taxi driver Mario! we all thanked him for driving all the way to Chepu to drop us off. he also agreed to return the next day to pick us up - a HUGE life saver because there isn't any public transporation

Chepu Adventures is an eco-tourism lodge. all facilities use water harvested from the rain and energy harvested from solar and wind power. there are eco-dorms and also small areas to camp. since there were so many of us and there was not enough space in the dorms, we set up our tents. i unfortunately didn't get a picture, but we crammed 7 people into tents that between both only had an occupancy of 5 people. keep in mind that we all had huge camping packs that were the size of mid-sized children to  fit into the tents as well