TRAVEL AND TOURS

In Puerto Montt you always wake to find a picture-postcard facing you through the window, because here beauty is everywhere and in every direction.

If the visitor chooses to explore by sea, the volcanoes and snowy peaks of the mainland will keep him energetically snapping his camera and forgetting to breathe in the face of such outstanding scenery.

The same thing will happen if his destination is the striking palafitos, or houses on wooden stilts at the seashore, caressed by the waves and the gentle murmur of the foamy breakers.

The whole of this region, as a matter of fact, seems to have been specially intended to wash away people's negative moods, filling them with vitality, perhaps because the hugeness of the landscape is able to hide negative feelings under its sheets of water, or perhaps due to the telluric forces emanating from its impressive landscape.

Puerto Montt was founded on February 12, 1853, by Vicente Perez Rosales, accompanied by a group of German settlers - those courageous and hardy men and women who colonized the apparently unfriendly land of the south of Chile.

Thanks to the drive of the pioneers, the city went through grew rapidly. In 1912, with the arrival of the railway, it became a centre for those who were going to the island of Chiloe and the Straits of Magellan. Development came with the steel track and the whistling of locomotives.

Over the years, the city kept growing and becoming more prosperous. However, nature gave it a nasty blow in 1960, when an earthquake almost destroyed it; that event rekindled the spirit of the old settlers, and it was rebuilt thanks to their drive and courage.

Puerto Montt was rebuilt and - in 1979 - became the capital of the 10th Region, the Lake Region. Puerto Montt is now a city of 110,000 inhabitants whose main industry is salmon fish farming, a constantly growing activity since 1985.

The city is changing, growing and broadening its borders. Progress is changing its time-honoured face; however, what will never change is the enterprising spirit of its people and the awe-inspiring beauty of its natural surroundings.

NATURAL AREAS

- Alerce Andino National Park is a natural reserve of 39,255 hectares in a mountainous area south of Lake Chapo, between the estuary and the bay of Reloncavi.
Among the protected native flora are: the larch, tineos, mañios, cinnamon trees, ferns and lianas; while the animals are: pudu deer, gray foxes, chingues and monitos del monte.
However, perhaps the most imposing thing is the forest landscape, improved by the waters of Sargazo lake and the deep gash eroded by the Lenca river.
Within the park there are campsites and lodges, who can undertake exciting excursions, especially along the Sargazo trail, a 10 km trekk that displays a series of dream landscapes.

- Lahuen Ñadi Natural Park, in the interior of this park you will find the area called El Rincon, noted because of the fact that it contains the only specimens of larch trees in the central valley, guaranteeing the survival of the specie, which has been indiscriminately extracted. Other species of local flora are the coigües and cinnamon trees.
Among the animals you can find chucao tapaculos, black-throated huet-huets, Darwin toads, choroys, monitos del monte, hares and chingues.

- Llanquihue National Reserve, this is 60 km east of Puerto Montt and covers 33,974 hectares. Its flora presents tepas, mañios, coiques, tiacas and lumas. Among the fauna we could find upland geese, peucos, black-throated huet-huets, hawks and condors.
Trails and pathways are especially reserved for Trekking fans.