Castro

Castro needs 2 days: touring the palafitos, wooden houses on stilts built literally over the sea, on one, and visiting one of Chiloé's 16 wooden churches, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the other. December-March brings the island's mildest weather, though rain is never fully off the table in Chiloé. It's inexpensive by Chilean tourism standards. Its churches, built by local communities between the 18th and 20th centuries combining European naval carpentry techniques with indigenous traditions, are a unique case of wooden religious architecture recognized by UNESCO in 2000.