The following day a good whack of us took an excursion to the island of Chiloè with the promise of sampling some traditional food and seeing penguins! Our guide for the day Pilar was lovely and spoke excellent English so gave us a great insight into life on the island. After disembarking the ferry and a short drive we found ourselves sat in the living room of a farmhouse owned and run by a chap called Hardy and his wife, sipping on a cup of tea (milk straight from the cow) and chomping on biscuits. Hardy and his beaming wife prepared a traditional Curanto for lunch which for a foodie was amazing... basically in a hole dug in the ground on top of red hot stones a mixture of mussels, chicken, pork, spicy sausages, potatoes and milcaos (a kind of potato bread) is covered with nalca (Chilean rhubarb) leaves which is then covered with wet sacks, and then with dirt and grass chunks, creating the effect of a giant pressure cooker and left covered for about an hour before peeling all the layers back and hoiking it all out. Everything takes on a wonderful smokey flavour and is really juicy. Throw in salads from the garden and muchos wine and it all added up to be one of the highlights of the trip so far! It didn't end there though, after lunch we drove to a beautiful beach where we all jumped into a boat with a chap called Carlos who took us to 3 nearby islands where the ??? and ??? Penguins migrate to for the summer to breed. It was amazing and I feel so privileged to have been able to see the cute little fella's in the wild!