|
The weather prediction for this day was rain, and rain is what we got. It rained most of the day, with thick low clouds. It wasn't the best conditions for sightseeing. Our plan was to drive down to the Reserva Forestal Llanquihue, which contains Volcan Calbuco. I didn't expect that we would be able to see the volcano, but the map showed a trail that went next to the Rio Blanco. There were two waterfall symbols on the map, so I thought we could hike along that trail until we saw the two waterfalls. But when we got to the entrance for the Llanquihue Reserve, there was a big sign that said the area was closed for safety reasons. Volcan Calbuco had erupted in April of 2015, and even though this was nearly a year later, apparently they were worried about another eruption. We drove to the Nacional Parque Alerce Andino. This park is named after the alerce trees, which are long lived, big trees, similar to the redwoods of North America. It was a 9 km drive down a dirt road from the park entrance to get to the trailhead. A ranger at the station told us that the trail to the Catedral (which I think is a famous rock formation) was washed out, but we could hike to Laguana Sargazo. It was raining when we started our hike, and the rain continued off and on during our whole visit. The park has built a nice boardwalk to the lake, including a big new suspension bridge across the river. The Laguana Sargazo wasn't much of a view, but it was enveloped in low thick clouds, so we could not see much. Perhaps on a sunny day, it is a really nice place to visit. The forest is full of trees, huge ferns and dense undergrowth; I think this implies that rainfall is a common occurence here. We did spot some of the alerce trees. We found a small path leading off from the main trail, and decided to follow it. It took us alongside a river, turning us in all directions so that I wasn't even sure which side of the river we were on. (It some how seemed that we were on the opposite bank of the river, yet hadn't crossed over the river. Was there a hidden bridge I didn't notice??). I believe this trail was probably used for bird watchers, because it led to a stony bank beside the river, a wide open space ideal for spotting birds. We could hear plenty of birds in the trees, but could never spot any of them. Just after leaving Nacional Parque Alerce Andino, we came to an unremarkable bridge that had a parking lot of cars - so we stopped to see why the other cars had stopped. There was a shrine placed there, beside a short waterfall pouring around some polished rocks - this was the Rio Coihuin o Chamiza .Melanie spotted some graffiti on the side of the bridge that said "Melanie 2015" - that was a funny thing to see. On our drive back to Puerto Varas, we stopped to fill up the car with gas - we had to return the rental car that evening. We paid cash at a Shell station, and the attendant somehow palmed one of the 2000 peso notes that I gave him - somehow it looked like I had given him only 20,000 pesos, when Melanie said she had counted out 22,000. So we paid over an extra 2,000 pesos, which is less than $2 USD. It was Valentines Day, so we had a hard time finding a restaurant where we could buy dinner without a huge wait. We ended up back at the same pizza place as the previous evening. After 5 PM, the sun came out and we could walk around Puerto Varas. The forecast for tomorrow said there was a 0% chance of rain! I liked that. MapsThe map shows the route we took to reach Alerces Andino National Park. Most of the route turned out to be paved road, which was an unexpected surprise.
It turned out to be difficult to find a map showing the trails in Alerces Andino National Park. There are no contour hiking maps available in Puerto Varas. Most shop workers didn't even seem to understand which park we were talking about when we asked for a map. This map shows the 10 trails in the park. There are two entrances, we came in at the north entrance. Trail #4 and #5 were closed due to flooding. We hiked trail #3 to Laguna Sargazo.
VideosIf you do not see the videos, but instead see a message that says: "Error: Video playback aborted" it is possible that the content is being blocked by your web browser. You may see a message at the top or bottom of your page that says "restricted webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls". If you see that message, click on the ALLOW BLOCKED CONTENT box and that should allow these videos to run.
To display the photo images on this webpage, I am using a freely distributed java script called Lightbox v2.7.1 written by Lokesh Dhakar. You can download this program by clicking on this link. All the text and photographs on this webpage are my own creation, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click the icon below to visit their site.
|
Click on any thumbnail to begin the slide show at that photograph Alerce Andino Photos
|
