Photo: CARLOS TEIXIDOR CADENAS (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio driving tour of the wooden churches of Chiloé, a long day out from Castro by road with a ferry crossing to Quinchao Island; the drives are not narrated. It starts in Dalcahue at the church of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, one of the largest churches in Chiloé, clad in alerce shingles, with a portico of nine unlike arches, and visits the town's history and ethnography museum and the craft market on the waterfront. On Quinchao it stops at the wooden church of Huyar Bajo, dating from 1818, at Curaco de Vélez, with its church and museum, and at Achao, where the church of Santa María de Loreto, begun by the Jesuits around 1730, tells how all these churches came to be: the Huilliche people, the Jesuit missions, the Circular Mission and the lay fiscales who kept the chapels. It visits the archaeological and ethnographic museum of Achao, founded by local people, and the church of Nuestra Señora de Gracia at Villa Quinchao, the second-largest of the sixteen World Heritage churches of Chiloé, and ends at the church of Santa María de Rilán, south-east of Castro.
10 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 35 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 6 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Dalcahue, Museo Etnográfico de Dalcahue, Feria Artesanal de Dalcahue.
Iglesia de Huyar Bajo, Iglesia de Curaco de Vélez, Museo y Centro Cultural Curaco de Vélez.
Iglesia de Santa María de Loreto de Achao, Museo Arqueológico y Etnográfico de Achao, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Gracia de Quinchao, Iglesia de Santa María de Rilán.
One of the largest churches in Chiloé, clad in alerce shingles, with a tall portico of nine arches that are not all alike.
The waterfront craft market, built to shelter the artisans who already sold their work on this shore, in the manner of a house on stilts.
A wooden church of 1818 on Quinchao, not on the World Heritage List but built in the same tradition with the joints of the island's boat-builders.
The church the Jesuits began around 1730, one of the oldest in Chile, where the story of the missions and the fiscales is told.
The second-largest of the sixteen World Heritage churches of Chiloé, 53 metres long, built for the crowds of its feast on 8 December.
The church at the end of the Rilán peninsula, built between 1908 and 1920, at the same time as the church of San Francisco in Castro.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 10 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 10 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Chiloé's Wooden Churches — Dalcahue, Quinchao and Rilán, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
10 narration points, including Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Dalcahue, Museo Etnográfico de Dalcahue, Feria Artesanal de Dalcahue, Iglesia de Huyar Bajo and Iglesia de Curaco de Vélez. That is about 16 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs a full day total, but you walk at your own pace. 10 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.