Lying 30 km off the coast of Chile, but still part of the country’s verdant Lake District, Chiloe Island feels like a world unto itself. Here, colourful wooden houses rise on stilts from the bays, warlocks and ghost ships are said to roam the night, and dinner comes in the form of a steaming curanto—a potluck of mussels, clams, chicken, ham, and several kinds of the island’s 286 native potato varieties. Shrouded in mist and dripping with moss, the island’s temperate rainforests shelter some of the world’s smallest and rarest animals.
It is these animals that brought me to Chiloe. Particularly the kodkod, South America’s smallest feline. As part of my quest to see all species of wild cats in their natural habitat, I booked six nights at Tepuhueico Park, a private nature reserve in the wild southwest of the island.
There are different ways to visit Tepuhueico Park. You can take a day tour from Castro to walk the trails in the magical, misty forest, or you can stay a night (or five!). But for those serious about finding the elusive mammals of Chiloe, the park offers the 5 Little Giants tour dedicated to long days in the field in search of the small five: Pudu, Kodkod, Darwin’s fox, River Otter, and Monito del Monte.
Pudu – World’s Smallest Deer
I met my two guides in Castro, Martín A, whose family owns the park (for six generations!) and Martín C, the local wildlife photographer whose photos of kodkods were one of the reasons I came to Tepuhueico Park. With two Martines guiding me into the forest, I wasn’t sure if I was about to track rare wildlife or accidentally join a boy band.
The answer became clear as soon as we drove through the park’s gate. A tiny deer, the smallest I’d ever seen, was browsing nonchalantly in a patch of sunshine by the side of the road. The pudu, the world’s smallest deer, grows to all of 30 to 40 centimetres tall at the shoulder and weighs only 3 to 12 kilograms. They’re so small that when startled, sometimes they simply freeze, hoping their pint-sized presence will go unnoticed in the undergrowth.
The pudu is the Tepuhueico Park’s mascot as far as the local people are concerned. For the Chilote people, the pudu holds a special kind of charm. Its gentle demeanour and elusive habits lend it a folkloric aura, and spotting one in the wild is considered a rare and lucky moment, almost like glimpsing a forest spirit.
Tepuhueico Lodge
When we arrived at the lodge perched on the shore of Lake Tepuhueico, I took a moment to wistfully admire my beautiful room—a cozy retreat where a large bed piled high with fluffy blankets faced a picture window that opened onto the quiet, green expanse of the forest beyond. The room seemed to demand lazy mornings and chilled out afternoons, but I knew I wasn’t going to have any.
Wildlife watching holidays are not for everyone. To find the elusive creatures, you have to be active when they are, which usually means early mornings, late evenings and long nights. Kodkod was making my life even more difficult by having unpredictable activity patterns throughout the day and night. So we had very long days with little sleep in between and few opportunities to lounge in bed.
But while I didn’t have much time to linger in my room, I made the most of the lodge’s extraordinary food. Every meal was a three-course experience, with each dish more inventive and unexpected than the last. As Martín A explained, during the quiet season, the chef enjoyed using the freedom to experiment, pairing unlikely ingredients and creating new flavours from local produce. After the first few days of being on the receiving end of the chef’s creative experiments, I began to look forward to every meal with almost the same anticipation I usually reserve for wildlife sightings.
Rufous-legged Owl
Our first night was about the owls. While looking for kodkods, we first found an Austral Pygmy owl – a small round ball of feathers with huge eyes and a sharp beak. Next to Martines’ utter excitement, we spotted another, larger owl, which turned out to be the Rufous-legged Owl, the holy grail of birdwatching in Chile. Both were beautiful birds. But as hard as I tried to think of them as “cats with wings”, my heart was set on mammals.
We watched some Chilean myotis (bats) emerge from their roost underneath the room of one of the cabins in the forest. Then came across a Long-haired grass mouse darting across the road. Yet none of the “little giants” that Chiloe Island is famous for made an appearance that night.
The Curious Darwin’s Fox
We struck gold the following night. While scanning the roadside trees for Monito del Monte – a tiny marsupial and one of the only surviving members of an ancient lineage that links South America to Australia, we saw a pair of shining eyes on the road ahead. A small animal was walking along the road towards us. Within a few heartbeats, a stunning Darwin’s fox materialised out of the darkness and kept walking towards us.
Martines told me that foxes were curious, but I didn’t expect one to approach almost within touching distance. With a compact frame weighing between 1.8 and 3.95 kg and a head-and-body length of 48 to 59 cm, this elusive canid stood mere meters away, its dark eyes locking with mine in a moment of mutual curiosity.
Known locally as the zorro chilote, Darwin’s fox is an endangered species endemic to Chile, primarily inhabiting the temperate rainforests of Chiloé Island and the Nahuelbuta Range. In most of its range, Darwin’s fox is considered a ghost. Even here, on Chiloe, it took Martin C eight years to see and photograph one.
Witnessing this rare creature in its natural habitat evoked a profound sense of awe and responsibility. The fox’s presence, its trust and curiosity, underscored the importance of preserving the land within Tepuhueico Park as a nature reserve. Elsewhere on the island, the fox is threatened by habitat loss and the domestic dogs, both in terms of competition and disease. The dog-free Tepuhueico Park provides much-needed sanctuary for Chiloe’s threatened species.
In that silent exchange with the curious fox beneath the ancient Coy way trees, I felt a deep connection to the wild heart of Chiloé.
The island’s furry wild heart remained with us for the next three days. The fox turned up at the lodge, tempted by the aromas that must be coming from the rubbish, stashed in the purpose-built wooden shed. We saw him each morning before dawn and each night as we headed on our spotlighting drives. His presence felt like a gift from nature, albeit one that apparently prefers leftovers to field mice.
Valdivian Rainforest
The 50,000-hectare Tepuhueico Park has two distinct zones: the forest, where the lodge is, and the coast that can only be accessed by driving to the tiny town of Cucao and re-entering the park.
The forest of Tepuhueico Park is downright magical. Here, the North Patagonian and Valdivian forests intertwine, cloaking the land in a tangle of ancient green. The ground is thick with sodden leaves, fallen branches, and a deep layer of moss that yields softly underfoot, each step sinking slightly into the damp earth.
Every surface – trunks, rocks, even the air itself- seemed draped in moss, studded with tiny ferns, crimson berries, and mushrooms in hues from bone-white to blood red. The ferns glisten with moisture, so heavy with rain that they look and feel like seaweed.
One day, we took the trail along the Codos River and then crossed the bridge and returned along the other side of the river. Walking among the ancient trees dripping with tendrils of moss felt like nature was giving me a hug. This cold temperate rainforest seemed even more lush than the tropical jungle of Borneo.
After the open, wind-swept steppe of Torres del Paine National Park, where I spent three days tracking Patagonia pumas, walking through the rain-soaked forest of Tepuhueico felt like stepping into a dream.
Chucao & Wet Wet
While walking in the forest, we came across two feathered icons of Chiloe Island. Walk into any artisan or souvenir shop in Castro and you’ll find images of a small curious bird looking at you from mugs, t-shirts, and drinking bottles. This is chucao – a small ground-dwelling bird with a fiery orange breast and a bold, whistling song, endemic to southern Chile.
On Chiloé Island, the chucao is deeply loved – its voice is believed to guide travellers safely through the forest, and its sudden appearance is often seen as a good omen, a spiritual presence in the misty woods.
The first chucao I encountered seemed even more curious about me than I was about it initially. I was crouching down on the forest floor, photographing a mossy tree trunk, when this tiny little guy emerged from the dense forest and proceeded to hop around us, nearly landing on my boot.
Further back into the forest, another type of tapaculo bird, a wet wet (Black-throated huet-huet) was furiously digging up the forest floor. Another southern Chile endemic, wet wet is a large, striking bird with a deep, echoing call that sounds like its name—“wet-wet!” Martin A explained that chucao often follows wet wet to snatch any treats the larger digs up.
The Waterfall
Another day, after watching a pair of pudus browsing calmly by the lake’s edge, so close I could see the dew on their fur, Martín A led us on a short boat ride across the lake to a hidden jetty. From there, we followed a narrow forest trail, the sound of crashing water growing louder with every step, hinting at something big ahead.
When the trees finally parted and the waterfall came into view, I stopped in my tracks. An entire river was plunging over a ledge in a roaring cascade, kicking up clouds of steam. The sheer force of it was breathtaking, so wild, untamed, and completely mesmerising. It was one of the most spectacular sights I’d seen on the island.
The Pacific Coast
After a couple of days of searching in vain for kodkods in the dense forest zone of the park, we decided to spend a day on the coast for a change of scenery and luck.
We began the morning in the quiet, misty village of Cucao, scanning the riverbanks for signs of the elusive Southern River Otter and peering into coastal wetlands in hopes of spotting a coypu—Chile’s shaggy, semi-aquatic cousin of the capybara. Neither made an appearance, but my consolation prize was a good one: I finally managed to photograph a Green-backed firecrown, a tiny hummingbird that flits about in jittery, high-speed zigzags like a feathered spark.
Cucao delivered another bucket list bird that day – the Ringed Kingfisher. In Spanish, it’s called martín pescador, which meant that morning I found myself in the company of three Martines: my two guides, and now, a charismatic kingfisher. A boy band indeed.
From Cucao, we made our way to the coastal zone of Tepuhueico Park, and its café that, according to Martín A, is famed for its pizzas. In this remote corner of the island, it is the southernmost pizza you can find on all of Chiloe.
The coast, of course, is about more than pizzas. This is where Martin C photographed the beautiful melanistic kodkod a year or so ago.
As we walked the sandy beach trails, we found many paw prints in the sand – pudu, fox, kodkod. We took the trail to Muelle del Tiempo (Pier of Time), one of several wooden installations scattered along Chiloé’s wild west coast. There are three in total, all created by the same artist. Each one represents a soul’s journey, and the pier in Tepuhueico is dedicated to the passage of time.
From the cliffs beside the muelle, I noticed clusters of wicked-looking seaweed—thick black tendrils like oversized spaghetti, thrashed and tangled by the surf. To my delight, a few days later, that very seaweed made a surprise appearance at dinner, artfully served as a garnish by our inventive chef.
While we were at the muelle, Martin A received a message from some acquaintances who were just driving past the town of Cucao and had a melanistic kodkod run across the road. The message said it was a female, trying to lead her cub across the road. So she ran across first, but the cub was too scared to follow. So she turned around and ran back. A short video was attached, capturing the cat’s second crossing.
Of course, by the time we reached the spot, the kodkods were nowhere to be seen. We briefly considered a stakeout, but road crossings are among the most dangerous moments in a kodkod’s life, and watching cars speed past made me too anxious on their behalf.
My one small consolation came courtesy of Martín C.’s eagle eyes: a distant coypu paddling through a wetland just off the roadside. We watched the furry rodent glide across the water in the fading light, but didn’t linger—we didn’t want to miss the kodkod family if they reappeared.
Birds of Chiloe Island
It appears that any luck I had for mammals was transferred to birds. Without trying, I saw some rare birds often in close encounters. I have already mentioned the owls, the chucao, the wet wet, and the beautiful kingfisher, but they were only the beginning.
We had several encounters with the magnificent Magellanic woodpeckers, spotted a Des Murs’s Witetail – a tiny bird with exceptionally long tail feathers. Practically everywhere we went, we saw Chiloe’s Thorn-tailed Rayaditos and Fire-eyed Diucons.
Patagonian Sierra Finch, Rufous-tailed Plantcutter, and a Tufted Tit-Tyrant – a big name for a tiny bird. Here is the full list of accidental bird observations.
The Elusive Kodkod Remains a Ghost of the Forest
In the end, my luck did not hold out with kodkods and not for the lack of trying. Each day from sunrise to midnight, we drove the park’s roads, walked its trails, and sat in stakeouts in the known kodkod territories.
One day, Martin A even invited another ranger, Nico, who is known for having unusually good luck with kodkod sightings, to join our night drive. We drove to the coastal zone in the middle of the night, since most of Nico’s sightings occurred on that road. We did see a total of four cats cross the road. Two were clearly domestic cats. The other two were black, so they could have been either. Unfortunately, they dashed across so fast and disappeared so thoroughly that we couldn’t make a positive ID. And since we didn’t notice an unusual shape about them (short tail, round ears, etc), we decided they were domestic black cats.
It wasn’t lost on me how seemingly arbitrary the value we attach to black cats is. Some black cats are a prized sighting, others – a disappointment. Yet sometimes we can’t even tell for certain which cat it is we are looking at.
Yet even though I did not see a kodkod, I spent six days in its world, exploring the dreamy Valdivian rainforest and meeting other creatures that share this world. The curious Darwin’s fox, as elusive as the kodkod in the rest of Chile, more than made up for its absence, appearing so frequently and in such close proximity that I couldn’t help but feel the forest had traded one rare gift for another.
More Wildlife Adventures in Chile
- Rainbow Valley Atacama Desert: The Most Underrated Landscape in Northern Chile
- Where to See Atacama Desert Wildlife around San Pedro de Atacama
- Complete Guide to Exploring the Atacama Desert Around San Pedro de Atacama
- Walking Through Chilote Mythology: A Self-Guided Tour of Castro, Chiloe
- Discovering the Wild Side of Chiloe Island in Tepuhueico Park
- Guide to Planning Your Patagonia Puma Quest in Torres Del Paine National Park
- Discovering Chilean Patagonia in Winter: Torres del Paine in May
- Llama vs Alpaca vs Vicuña vs Guanaco: How to Tell Them Apart
- 11 Stunning South American Wild Cats and Where to See Them
- Looking for Pumas in Chile Without a Guide
