Chile’s Lake District

After the underwhelming ferry trip from Ancud to Puerto Montt (due to the bad weather) we had finally arrived back in civilized society after months of difficult Patagonian travel. Whilst it is true that Patagonia had been colonized by Europeans for hundreds of years, some of it was still a very new territory. The areas in Patagonian Chile (especially the Carretera Austral) we had been to were sparsely populated and badly serviced for travel of any kind. With bad roads, cramped or full buses and local attitudes to foreigners ranging from suspicious to downright racist, it was with great pleasure that we installed ourselves in the Puerto Montt mall’s food court and bought a McDonalds.

The Chilean Lake District (or Region 10) had so far had some amazing scenery, and it was great to see the rainforests in all their splendor, but it was also nice to be back in a relatively big city again. At first glance, Puerto Montt was very similar to the cities of Chiloe in that it had a very similar feel to the shops, people and wooden architecture. Some of the architecture was similar to places along ruta 7, the Carretera Austral, and it was no wonder – a lot of these towns were actually founded by Germans in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, seeking to escape the economic depression. German bakeries and beers abound in this part of the world, although, strangely, they really only sell Chilean foodstuffs like the completo italiano, a huge hot dog covered in tomatoes, avocado and mayonnaise (the red, green and white of the Italian flag).

As the trip from Ancud was only about three hours, we had some time to kill before meeting with Nathaly and Miguel, or couchsurfing hosts. We spent most of the time in the mall, and then went and met Miguel at the main plaza. We all grabbed a collectivo, which in Chile means a shared taxi. These cars zip around on set routes around the city, and you flag them down and pay less than a dollar for your trip – an excellent idea that would work well in London creating cheap public transport.

Miguel told us that the weather was always pretty bad in this region, with a lot of rain a lot of the time, just like London. We got back to his house where we also met with Nathaly, and talked about Chile through the evening. Miguel was a journalist and covered a lot of crime stories, and Nathaly was a graphic designer, so we heard a lot of interesting things.

The next day, whilst our hosts were at work, Francesca and I explored a little. We tried to visit the sole two museums in the town, but they were both closed for renovation! Not to be put off, we grabbed a bus to the district of Angelmo, a hive of activity along the costanera, or coastal road. Angelmo has a food market, alongside numerous tourist shops, vendors, art and craft stalls, and small inexpensive local cocinerias, or cafes.

We looked at some of the stalls, and I bought Francesca a little key ring with her name on it – then we checked out some of the sea food market. It is not as grand as it once was, but it still has lots of clean food, including salmon, eel and octopus.

We were looking at the prices of some of the food there when we noticed how clear the water was, with lots of fish heads and fish parts on the bottom. A sea lion was in the bay, diving for fish treats, whilst tourist boat took off and explored the nearby island. A helicopter landed not very far away.

By this time, the weather had completely changed since we got there. It was now bright and sunny, and pretty hot! We went into the local Navimag ferry office to ask about ticket prices for a future planned trip, but the service was so poor we left before we got an answer.

At 4pm the local tourist information office puts on a free walking tour from the main plaza de armas. We put down our names and went on it. Starting in plaza martinez, we learnt that the city had been founded to protect Chilean sovereignty in the area – as much of the Patagonian cities had been. The plaza was named for one of the two sea captains who founded it. However, German settlers actually arrived a year before that, and we saw a bronze statue dedicated to them on the sea front.

The Diego Rivera theatre sits on a nearby corner, named after a famous Mexican playwright, after Mexico gave Chile a large sum of money in foreign aid after the huge earthquake in Valdivia in 1960. Nowadays, we learnt, the theatre hosts mostly local talent, but also plays host to some musicians, acting troupes and other artists from Santiago from time to time.

The most iconic building in the city is perhaps the cathedral on the main plaza. Built in 1896, it mostly survived the earthquake, even though it was built of Alerce wood! Designed to replicate the Parthenon in Athens, it differs only because a bell tower of copper was added in 1905. Francesca had commented that it looked a court room when we went inside it, and that is because it is a classical building. Chilean soldiers making their way to the front in the war against Peru and Bolivia used it as a barracks, and it was even used as a theatre for awhile before again reverting to a Catholic church.

Our next stop was La casa Pauly, or Pauly house, where a famous local family lived from 1903. The Pauly Oelckers family were rich Germans who gave over most of their house to hosting artists and musicians, notably Claudio Rani, aa famous Chilean pianist who practiced there. We went inside the Renaissance-style house and found a lot of arts and crafts market stalls thee, including some delicious free samples of baked goodies like brownies. Delicious!

The city is looking to buy back all of the furniture, marble sculptures and paintings by famous artists that they had in the house and repopulate it to look like it did back in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Apparently this is costing the taxpayer a lot of money, so the jury is out as to whether this is a good way to spend the money or not.

A Jesuit church, constructed in 1872 in neo-classical style was up next. It was a pretty big church, with 5 altars, and three separate wings. However, the earthquake took its toll on this church, and destroyed most of it, but it was rebuilt and declared a National Monument in 1997. A huge steeple with four Austrian bells can still be seen at the site, along with a clock that was added in 1905.

We saw an old school, which initially only allowed Germans to study there, but later allowed Chileans also. This building is being turned into a university at some point, but the city does not seem to have much money, so maybe not.

The last stop on the guided walk was a large sculpture next to the sea, which was of a man and woman sitting together looking out across the Ocean. The guide told us that the song was made in 2003 to symbolize a famous Chilean song called puerto amor (port of love) sung by a Uruguayan band called Los Iracundos who sang at the Puerto Montt festival and changed the name of the song to ‘Puerto Montt’ for the occasion. They then changed the song name permanently and officially after a warm reception from the Chileans. The truth is slightly different however. The band’s original demo was actually called por tu amor, or ‘for your love’, but as this did not rhyme or work with the test audiences, the record label told them to change the words and music so that the song could enter the Chilean market and make money, which it did. The band did not sing at the festival, and had never been to the city until after the song became successful as Puerto Montt, but I can see why the guide would tell the tourists this other story – it sounds better than just a marketing scheme.

A short but sweet tour of 40 minutes which was well worth the wait if visiting Puerto Montt for a few days. We headed back and met up with Miguel and Nathaly for drinks at a few local bars.

The next day, Francesca and I got some work done, as the weather had gone bad again, and Miguel and Nathaly were out at the nearby Puerto Montt Arena at a free concert. We had tried to get tickets too but they were sold out. On the 9th February we got up early and went to the bus station to head out of town to the nearby National Park Vicente Perez Rosales. We had made a packed lunch and got a local bus to neighboring Puerto Varas, where we saw the awesome sight of the Osorno Volcano across Lake Llanquihue. We then took an onward bus to Petrohue, which in the park – a last stop before Argentina. Petrohue is a small town within the National Park, and in the Mapuche language, means ‘place of mosquitoes’, but luckily we never saw any whilst we were there.

Our first stop along this busy road (it was a Sunday) was at some waterfalls. The Saltos del Rio Petrohue were some small but fierce cascades on a turquoise river which reminded us of Futaluefu) quite a bit. The falls did not look navigable by raft or kayak to me, but they were lovely to look at. The black rocks were worn smooth around the water’s edge, and looked like plastic – everywhere we could see the grey volcanic ash from Osorno’s numerous eruptions, the last of which was in 1869.

Osorno is a 2652 meter volcano which is conical, and is one of the most active volcanoes in the Andes. It erupted 11 times since the Europeans arrived in South America, leaving a trails of basalt and andesite lava all over the landscape. The large amount of snowfall at the top of the mountain has created glaciers, and also excellent skiing conditions. It was an awe-inspiring site, and the closer we got the more I really liked the mountain. We did see a flier announcing the disappearance of a Dutch tourist from the volcano’s peak in 1985 – but no one has ever found a body. These volcanoes definitely command a lot of respect.

The sun was now beating down on us, so we had great weather all day – our usual good luck! A lovely little walk along the adjoined trails led to the side of the river next to some rapids, where we had our lunch, and spotted an American Mink. These cute little devils were introduced to South America and have been causing havoc on the local environments ever since.

Entrance to the waterfall was about 3 US dollars each, and was managed by CONAF, Chile’s park rangers. They were not doing a good job of protecting the park though, as w saw a young couple graffiti a rock on which lots of people had scratched their names. Then later, after reading about a particularly old basaltic rock wall we had past, we saw a man in his fifties scratching his name into it with his knife! Why is it that when people see that other people have done something, they think it is OK for them to do it? Scratching your name onto rocks in a National Park is such a selfish and stupid thing to do, I wonder if we should have challenged the man – but he did have a knife, so we just told a park ranger what had happened.

The information trail led us past a clump of Chilean myrtles which I always love, and we made it back to the road where we got a bus the rest of the way to Petrohue. It was lucky we arrived when we did, too, because the queue to the waterfall and the trails was now huge, so arrive early!

Osorno Volcano now started to really loom large the closer we got to it! The snowy cap and pyramid shape made it look like Mount Fuji. The road followed the Rio Petrohue all the way to the town, which sat on the All Saints Lake (Lago Todos los Santos). This lake came highly recommended and did not disappoint. Turquoise green, the glacial river was like  Lago Verde we had seen in the Alerce National Park in Argentina, but with a huge volcano right next to it! We did not have time to walk the whole way up the so-called Desolation Trail to the volcano (6 hour round trip), so we opted for a more sedentary boat trip around the lake instead.

The small boat (minimum 4 people, but on a Sunday in summer this is no problem) went for half an hour around the lake for $US6 each. It was well worth it, and we saw both the Osorno Volcano and the Puntiagado Volcano in the North of the park. This is the lake that people must cross to get to Argentina, and we saw many backpackers coming into Chile whilst waiting for our boat to get going.

We got back to the road in time to get one of the clapped-out buses back to Puerto Varas and then another one from there back to Puerto Montt. The journey took ages, mostly because the driver was as poor as the terrible road conditions that seemed to have a thousand different road works on it.

We decided to wait around in Puerto Montt until a tour of nearby Monte Verde which left the same tourist information point that gave us the walking tour. Miguel and Nathaly kindly agreed to letting us stay the extra days, and so we caught up with some work on Monday and went on the tour on Tuesday.

We arrived at the tourist information center just before 11am and the tour left in two large iconic bright yellow US school buses. We arrived at the archaeological site of Monte Verde about 1 hour later. The Monte Verde tour is not in the least bit interesting if you cannot speak Spanish at advanced level. The guides DO NOT speak English, in spite of what the Puerto Montt tourist information told us. We did not expect much from the site, but we understood even less when we got there – there is nothing happening there, no museum, de nada. The tour is run by locals who own the land, and, of course, there is a little café and gift shop!

The Monte Verde site is touted in Chile, and particularly Puerto Montt, as the oldest human settlements in the Americas – carbon dated to between 12,460 and 14,600 years ago. When it was discovered in 1975 by the family who still own the land (a visiting student identified a ‘cow bone’ as a mastodon tooth), anthropologists from the Valdivian university, Universidad Austral de Chile, quickly descended and began numerous excavations.

They found human settlements that had been preserved by peat bogs caused by rising water levels. The lack of oxygen in the bogs prevented decay of the material, and so far tools, mastodon meat, extinct llama, shellfish and even a child’s footprint have been found. A dozen huts that were covered in hides were also found that would have housed about 30 people.

Scientific debate can on occasion be extremely combative. This is one such occasion. Proponents of the existing Clovis Theory (that the earliest settlements were in New Mexico) now had to accept that Monte Verde was a few thousand years older. This flies in the face of known migration patterns of human ancestors. However the Chilean proclamations that this is the oldest site are incorrect. One human settlement in Brazil is much older – carbon dated to between 32,000 to 48,000 years old.

Much work is still to be done at the Monte Verde site – which a paleontological blue-ribbon commission declared as valid in 1997. Nowadays it is really just a field covered in cow shit – so it is probably better to research it online, or wait for a museum on the site to open. Since it was discovered 40 years ago, and no real presentation to the public currently exists in the region, you might not want to hold your breath.

It seems that the ancestors of native South Americans DID in fact come from the North, over the land bridge formed on the Bearing Straight during the last ice age. How they travelled is still a matter of debate – some say they travelled overland, some by the coast, and even by boats, along the coast, living a largely nomadic and marine life. DNA results show an ancestry with Asian people, which explains the Asiatic looks of many indigenous South Americans. What is certain is that if you are visiting South Chile and want to see old human settlements, you are better off going to Pali Aike rather than Monte Verde, especially if you do not speak Spanish.