Iloca, Licanten · CL

Iloca

Iloca is a small Pacific-side beach town on the commune of Licantén, about 117 kilometres west of Curicó in Chile's Maule Region. In a quiet year its population sits in the low hundreds, but each summer the streets fill and the broad, lead-grey beach becomes one of the most visited stretches of coast in the region alongside Constitution. This is the principal seaside resort of Curicó Province: an unhurried, family-facing balneario where the main pleasures are long walks on fine sand, cold bracing swims and a table full of fresh fish. What gives Iloca its character is the meeting of coast and river. The village forms the heart of the Mataquito valley's coastal axis with the fishing cove of Duao to the north and La Pesca at the river mouth to the south, where a great rock called El Peñón holds up a viewpoint over the place where the Mataquito pours into the Pacific. Added to the wetlands, dunes and birdlife just inland, that mix makes Iloca a low-key base from which to explore one of central Chile's least-touristed but most ecologically rich shorelines.