Chilean Lake Country

We have just spent 3 magnificent days in the Chilean Lake and Volcano area. As opposed to the desert of the north, the scenery here is lush and green. The Andes are not as high, but the temperatures are colder, so they are still snow-capped. Our temperatures are in the 40s in the morning and top out in the upper 50s. We’re wearing our fleeces and sweaters over and over and over. I even went out and bought a headband and gloves for additional warmth!

Our first day started in Puerto Montt, which is where the Pan American Highway makes a left and moves into Argentina. Below that, road travel from Chile goes into Argentina and uses their highway system to navigate north and south. We visited Vicente Perez Rosoles National Park, where we took a boat trip on Emerald Lake, saw the magnificent volcano, Osorno (Picture 1), traveled along the rippling Rio Petrohue (Picture 2) and observed the significant rapids on the river (Picture 3). The Osorno volcano has not erupted in over 150 years, so it is currently considered dormant. We saw another volcano (although with much more cloud cover), which erupted in the 70s and has historically erupted every 30 years or so, so everyone is just waiting….

On our second day we visited Chiloe Island and did an easy hike in the national park with the same name. This park encompasses a tropical rain forest that receives 3 meters of rain a year (that’s 119 inches!). Tree trunks are covered with many varieties of mosses and ferns. Picture 4 shows one example. The plant growth is impenetrable and our guide told us that within a year, without working to keep things clear, the forest would reclaim the path.

Yesterday we visited Rio Simpson National Preserve. We’re at the northern edge of Patagonia and started to see amazing mountain scenery and fjords. It reminded us of the Norwegian Coast or New Zealand—only with fewer people.  Our ship traveled through a fjord for a couple of hours before arriving at Puerto Chacabuco. We then drove through the amazing countryside before arriving in Coyhaique, which is the regional capital—in the middle of a bowl, surrounded by mountains. Picture 5 shows the rock formation that signifies the start of the National Preserve. They call it the English Cake or the English muffin. In the winter it is covered with snow on top, which looks like frosting on a cupcake. Picture 6 shows the man in the mountain—affectionately called the Muffin Man! (Makes one reminiscent for the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire—although this one even has hair.) Picture 7 and 8 show typical mountain scenery along the Rio Simpson.  For our plant friends, fields were covered with the flowers (lupines?) in Picture 5.

We’ve encountered some new and unusual plant life. Picture 9 is the national tree of Chile—the Monkey Puzzle tree. The trunk is covered with thorns and it’s said that even a monkey couldn’t climb it. Picture 10 is the Nalca plant, with huge leaves. People eat the stems and use the leaves as toppers in an open-pit BBQ. One person told us the stems taste like rhubarb, another like celery—we didn’t try!

One of our speakers told us that in Valparaiso we were at an equivalent latitude of San Francisco, only in the southern hemisphere. In the lake country we’re in British Columbia. We’re currently sailing into glacier country—the southern hemisphere’s Alaska.