Isla Mancera

This afternoon our history class took a field trip to the island Isla Mancera to see a 350-year-old fort from the Spanish colonies in Valdivia in the 17th century. It is one of 7 forts and castles in the system of fortifications around the Bay of Corral, which is where the rivers that join together in Valdivia enter the Pacific Ocean.

 To get to the island we took a ferry from Niebla across the bay, where we could just see the town of Corral looming through the fog.

Mancera is a very small island, basically a handful of houses, a beach, a ferry dock, the fort, and a whole lot of sheep.

The colorful fishing boats are called "bongos" here, and they were the only thing that stood out in all the rain and fog.

The amount of bird species here is overwhelming. These pelicans were the easiest to photograph, but we also saw bandurrias, celtihues, tiuques, buitres (vultures), and golondrinas (swallows). My host family says that when the swallows arrive in Valdivia, it means that spring is officially here, since they migrate from the northern hemisphere to summer in the south.

A guard tower overlooking the fort of Mancera is the tallest structure remaining after all of the earthquakes in the past 350 years.

The area to the left was the garden area and the building to the right was the main house of the fort.

A view out the doorway of the ruins of what was the church, the largest building in the fort.



Professor Molina explaining the mechanics of the cannon. This one is just put here on display because none of the actual cannons lasted through the ages, but there were once dozens of them facing out into the bay to fire at enemy ships.

Fog and rain may have limited the quality of my photos, but the winter weather that is typical on the island from the months of May to September gave us a sense of how isolated and difficult colonial life must have been in the late 1600s.