Chillin´ on Chiloé

Hi, all - sorry about the lack of photos. I lost a bit of camera gear (not the camera!) so it´s a real pain to post photos at the moment.
We made it to the island of Chiloé, about halfway down the country, and it´s blissfully warm. For the previous two days, Lu and I hiked the west coast of the island, from the village of Chepu to the national park and back. The scenery is stunning - the Pacific Ocean hurling its waves at the rocks below, colonies of penguins sunning themselves on skerries, and flowers everywhere. Despite the beauty, most of the vegetation has spikes or thorns of some kind. Even the ferns are tough and leathery! Still, it´s so nice to be in a summer environment.
The Pacific breeze played nice with us for the hike, and the weather stayed warm and sunny, but the wind was no deterrent to hordes of humungous horseflies that plagued us for the length of our hike. These things were vicious! They went for joints - shoulders, wrists, elbows, knees - and they wanted blood. They seemed to like Lu better than me, thankfully, but they nearly drove the pair of us crazy!
We preservered, and were repaid with the gregarious company of Paméla, a resident of the land adjacent to the national park. She and her husband, Manuél, live in a remote settlement and harvest seaweed for a living. They host campers on their land. We stayed as soon as they told us about the penguins - an excellent camping spot in earshot of the ocean, with great amenities as long as you like cold showers and plenty of horse shit on the ground. Paméla hiked us up a hill to look for Zorros del Mar (seals) , but no luck. We´d seen one of these massive fellas sunning himself on a beach on the way up to the campground, anyway, so we didn´t feel cheated. The penguins, alas were separated from us by a high tide and pounding surf. We couldn´t wait long enough for the tide to go out in order to see them - we had a meeting with our return boat to Chepu scheduled, and were terrified to miss it. So the penguins remained distant, and we caught the boat. One small compensation was that the boat captain refused to take our money for the 45 minute ride to Chepu.
So much more to tell, but for now, I have to go!
Sending you all sunny thoughts,
L