Chiloé in 4 days

Wooden houses on stilts in the fjord mud, painted on the street side and standing in the water behind, survivors of the 1960 tsunami.

A yellow and lilac wooden church on the main square, clad in metal sheeting, with a larch and cypress vault shaped like an upturned hull.

On Sunday mornings, weavers from nearby islands sell hand-spun wool, hats and blankets by the jetty, beside family kitchens serving curanto and seafood empanadas.

The islands' signature dish: shellfish, chicken, smoked meats and potato breads cooked in a pit of red-hot stones under nalca leaves and earth.

Ten minutes by ferry from Dalcahue, Achao has Santa María de Loreto, built around 1740 with larch and wooden pegs, the archipelago's oldest church.

Valdivian rainforest, peat bogs and dunes on the Pacific side, entered from Cucao, where the El Tepual trail runs on boardwalks through moss-covered trees.

A wooden pier ending in mid-air above the Pacific at Punta Pirulil, a 2005 sculpture inspired by a Huilliche belief about souls awaiting a ferryman.

Three rocky islets 27 km from Ancud where Humboldt and Magellanic penguins nest side by side, seen from boats pushed off the beach by hand.