Central Valley & Lake District (Chile)

Ola again!

So Chile... The first problem we were faced when arriving there was the size of the country: Chile's coastline for example runs for over 5000 km. At its narrowest point the country is only 150km wide, so maps of Chile have to be split into three parts! We decided to sacrifice the northern Chile and start our tour on the regions of the Central Valley and Lake District. Feeling adventurous enough to match the chilean way of driving we rented the huge Toyota Hilux that you see on the photo. Please note this type of car is appropriate for driving up volcanos and through the Andes, but not for going on the school run in Chelsea! Needless is to say we had loads of fun driving that thing around while pretending to be american tourists!



And so begun our 3000 km Chilean road trip. We were really glad we rented the van since so many roads were unpaved, in particular the ones leading to national parks or hot springs. Despite the car we still managed to get stuck on our way to one such hot springs. This place was so remote that we had to walk for an hour until we made it to one of the national parks were we met four bemused park Rangers. Which brings me to our second problem in Chile: it turns out that they had just had their worst winter in 40 years! The Rangers had spent the winter completely isolated in the park by the snow, having to walk with snow shoes for 6 hours to get provisions, every couple of weeks. The road had just become kind of transitable in the days before our arrival but the Rangers were still waiting for the road people to come and clear it. They were very surprised that we managed to come so far along the road and not so surprised that we'd got stuck... I like to think we provided some welcome entertainment to the Rangers, who kindly came to tow our car out.


You might be wondering what kind of hot springs must these be to make us adventure through bad roads like that? Well, have a look at the photos of the Termas Geometricas and you'll understand...

Likewise, the most beautiful parks seemed to be the most inaccessible ones but well worth the trouble! Given the hard winter, the rivers were well full and the several waterfalls particularly astonishing. Here are photos of the Siete Tazas (Seven Cups, refering to seven consecutive falls), the Salto del Laja (a pretty wide waterfall) and of the Saltos del Petrohue (where the river is forced to a narrow passage, producing beautiful rapids).

Being such a geologically active area, aswell as the aforementioned hot springs we also spent a lot of time looking at, climbing, driving around or just desperatelly trying to get a clear photo of volcanos. For instance we spent three days in swiss alpine-like Pucon, at the base of volcano Villarica, which was permanently covered in clouds. With not much luck overground we decided to try going underground and visit some of the caves Villarica's eruptions had produced over the years. Here I almost saw my dreams come true in Chocolate Cave! Unfortunately, after close inspection the walls of this cave turned out not to be covered in chocolate but in an iron rich rock which gave it the reddish colour... Blhagh!

We had to give up on Villarica and try our luck with another beautifull volcano, called Osorno. After driving for six hours we arrived at Puerto Varas (our base for exploring the area surrounding the volcano) only to find Osorno also covered in cloud! Tom was becoming a frustrated photographer by this time and the weather forecast didn't bring good news... On the other hand I was quite pleased, having found out that the house we were renting came fully equiped with three doggies!

We were approaching the end of our stay in these parts so the lack of a good sunny day for photos was becoming a bit of a problem. On the next day we visited the pretty Frutillar where the influence of the german colonists still shows in the bavarian style houses. From there we were keeping an eye on Osorno, which stubbornly remained clouded over (you can see it in the background of the next two photos of Frutillar).

As if on purpose, our final day in the region was blessed with a clear blue sky. Tom went trigger mad and basically ignored me for the whole day but managed to get hundreds of photos of Osorno! I've been forbidden to delete any of the photos he chose to put on the blog, so please let me present to you the Volcano Osorno, again and again and again...

The perfect dome of Orsono.... finally out of those clouds!




















Alpaca meets backpacker!

Osorno in the morning...

... and Osorno at sunset.




















And this is a photo of the Lago Todos os Santos (just to show a photo of something else than Osorno...).

On our way back to Santiago we made a stop in the wine region, were we visited the Balduzzi vineyard. Hmmm... We really cursed the no-liquids-on-board-of-planes rule as it meant we couldn't carry any wine bottles with us.......so we had to drink them in Chile instead!

Bye for now,

Vania