From the wilderness into the desert: Parque National Puyehue:
Northeasterly of Valdivia is the parc Puyehue with the 2236m high vulcano. A 4 days hike brings us over its top to the lago Ranco.
We leave the bus in El Caulle near the border to Argentina. A short walk brings us to the information center of CONAF ( Corpration National Forestal ) in Anticura. Here the rangers Luis Briones and Jose A. Gayozo welcome us very friendly and the deal of mentioning the parc in our report exemts us from paying the entrance fee! We get important informations about the conditions of the path: snowcovered, badly marked trailes to the idyllic valley of the Rio Nilahue! The weatherforecast is good so we risk the ascent: steeply trail through a denth primary wood –bosque valdiviano– with numerous species of trees like tepa, coihue, mano, ulmo,tineo, arrajan and olivillo in denth smaller shrubs. From an altitude of 600m only tepa and manotrees are growing. The deep eroded path is very strenuous! From 1000m on the vegetation changes again and a lengawood with lots of plaits begins. We reache the refugio Puyehue after a 5 hours walk on a nice meadow with a little river for the water to cook with. We put our tents or sleep in the hut with a big groupe of girls-and boyscouts!
After a cold night with little snow we start climbing the vulcano: struggling through big amounts of ashes, where almost no vegetation can live anymore, through deep snow up to the border of the vulcano. The view is spectacular on the TOP!! The sliding down on the snowfields is big fun! On a slowly rising path we round the western side. Steam is coming out on different fields, the so called fumaroles. Hot springs and geysires are found lower down the fields. But it is too late to get there and to take a hot bath! We put up our tents on the northern side of the vulcano where unvisible hot air meltetd the snow and give way to dry ash patches.
A new clear day! The orientation is very difficult, no good maps and a badly marked sign in completely wet shoes!! We are looking for the way to the valley of Rio Nilahue. Everybody is released when we find the small path through the very dense natural cover. We cross the river Contafuerte 7 times sensless to put the shoes off! The path is again and again overgrowth with dense bamboowood and fallen manotrees – we are on a agility parcour! But all of a sudden we reach an old widen path. After 9 hours walking the wood goes over in a lovely meadow, where we spend the night.
A new beautiful day with 27 km to the end. We cross the Rio Nilahue and what a surprise: because of the elections in Chile a bus which collects all the people from the abandonned farms takes us, too and brings us to the village Rininahue on the lake of Ranco, our goal!
Schoolvisit on the pensinsula Corral:
With a wonderful breakfast we were welcomed by the mayor of Corral Mr. Hernandez. He explained us his visions of building an access from the boarder of Argentina to Corral.With several nice presents for Salina we left to go for a speech in the school Escuela Rural La Aguada infront of over 100 students. We were very much impressed about the different exhibitions in recycling, woodworking, composting, making honey, conserving fruits etc. They realy have a very actif board of teachers!
The second speech was in the Escuela Basica Corral. Here the teachers were very interested, too of our presentation. We enjoyed very much the nice lunch, sponsored by the mayor, with a beautiful view over the bay of Corral. On a nice trip along the coast to the south the teachers Sonya and Yorgelina presented us the very beautiful