Haven’t you given up your dream of staying in trees like Tarzan yet? This is exactly the village for you.
LIVING like TARZAN in a TREE VILLAGE
Every child’s dream is to have a tree house, but growing up this desire is closed in a drawer that is difficult to reopen. “I would like to live like Tarzan, with a suspended house and move among the trees with vines”. Well, maybe moving with the lianas would require long periods of practice, but staying in a village suspended between the trees is possible. Which place offers this unusual opportunity?
# A wild experience on an island that is anything but uninhabited
This little gem is hidden in the dense nature of Chile, in the Chiloé archipelago. The largest of these islands, Chiloé in fact, is 180 kilometers long, 50 kilometers wide and is by no means an uninhabited island as you might think. There are two large cities, Castro and Ancud, and in 2000 its wooden churches were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Yet, despite the island having almost 160,000 inhabitants, in its forests there is a small village where it is possible to live an experience that would be the envy of even Tarzan.
# Improvised construction? Absolutely not. It is a well-finished architectural project
Located in the municipality of Queilén, the community takes the name of Tiny Houses Comarca Contuy and consists of a stilt house and four tree houses. However, these houses are not an example of improvised construction, quite the opposite. They were designed by the Chilean architects of the Utreras Arquitectos studio, which completed the construction of the 2016 village. The project was commissioned by the Comarca Contuy association, which is responsible for promoting local tourism through artistic, cultural and above all natural initiatives. The architects stated that “The idea came from the creation of four ‘glamping‘ style shelters among the trees”. The aesthetic appearance of the houses is not accidental, the architects wanted to reproduce the surrounding ecosystem, making the buildings look “like birds’ nests, through the circular windows”.
# Living like tarzan (or almost) has never been easier
To say that you live in contact with nature is an understatement, here nature becomes the real home. The design of the village was carried out taking into account the irregular topography of the area and for this reason the houses are raised and located at different heights, built on coigüe, evergreen trees typical of this area. Large windows allow the view to be lost in the landscape and being all made of wood, the sounds of nature become part of the living spaces without any impediment. Each of the houses is connected to the others through wooden walkways, although each unit is autonomous and has its own private patio, kitchen with oven and shared bathroom with shower, as well as the sleeping area.
If you have closed the dream of a tree house in the drawer but you do not intend to leave it locked up for much longer, you would probably do better to mark this Chilean village on the map. Fortunately, the houses are connected by a walkway, there is no need to learn how to use the lianas…
ROSITA GIULIANO
