Don Carlos Carrillo never lacked good will, of that we were certain. However, his voluntary welcome in Pucón often led to messes that we were forced to resolve.
We left the Cabaña Quiñolafquen where we had been accommodated very early. We left her sprinting towards the Huerquehue National Park, a ex libris de Pucón and one of the oldest protected areas in Chile, founded in 1912.
At the entrance, the park administrator gives us bad news. "Well, I understand that everything was agreed but look, from the municipality, nothing came to me."
Ranger of the Huerquehue National Park, one of the most renowned in the region of La Araucania.
The day before, in our presence, Don Carrillo had actually called a local delegation from CONAF, the influential Corporación Nacional Forestal. Only he did it to the one in the wrong park: he had called Villarrica National Park instead of Huerquehue.
We explained the mistake to the patient director and underlined that we came from the other side of the planet, that Pucón's scenarios were wonderful and that we would feel frustrated if we couldn't reveal them in Portugal.
Luckily, in addition to being understanding, he is a nature photography lover. “I only have a D50, nothing like your machines. But there I go, doing my best. Look, no problem. Come in. Get tired as much as possible and, above all, have fun”.
The Huerquehue Desert National Park
Two days earlier, we had climbed to 2860m from the sulphurous summit of the Villarrica volcano, one of the most active in Chile, near the city of Pucón. We still felt our legs recovering from punishment. While on a tour of South America, we could not give them a break.
We were entering April. Pucón's high season ended in February, the last month of the Chilean summer. Though the day dawned once more gloriously, we didn't see a soul. The unexpected loneliness only magnified the alpine visual scenarios to which we gave ourselves in the meantime.
Panorama of Lake Tinquilco, in the heart of PN Huerquehue.
Shortly after we take it, the Tres Lagos trail cuts through a sloping thick bamboo grove that we cross with the help of mini-bridges made of earthen boards. Upwards, this forest gives way to the Andean forest of Patagonia that is more characteristic of these parts.
We started to walk among mossy araucaria trunks, measuring tens of meters, lofty crowns and branched sub-tops with such symmetry or eccentricity that we are used to appreciating them as vegetable works of art.
The first autumn leaves appear around March, April at PN Huerquehue in the vicinity of Pucón.
By the edge of Lake Tinquilco
The profusion of these araucarias and other types of conifers and pine trees made up vast areas that were more than gloomy, lugubrious, in which we zigzagged like insects eager for light. That is, until the trail gets fed up with the gloom and leads us to the edge of the bottle-shaped bed of Lake Tinquilco.
Barred by the multitude of araucarias around, not even a breeze runs. Okay, more than a lake, the Tinquilco ("quiet waters") reveals itself as a rigorous mirror that duplicates the surrounding arboreal shapes and semi-autumn tones. Some of its corners are filled with tall grass that, against the light, show an almost spiritual presence.
Eventually, a pair of redfish comes out of that grass. It generates pioneering aquatic furrows in the flow that, for a good hundred meters, break up in front of us.
We continue up the Tres Lagos trail. As a reward for the effort, we are rewarded by the majestic view of the almost-perfect cone of the Villarrica volcano, mottled in black and snow-white, high above the supreme crowns of the araucarias.
Sunset gilds the almost perfect cone of the active volcano Villarrica, one of several in the region of La Araucania.
In the Mapuche dialect – the predominant indigenous ethnicity in the region – Huerquehue means “place of messengers”. As if to illustrate, Villarrica sends smoke signals into the blue sky, completely devoid of clouds.
These are unmistakable messages of the volcano's destructive power. How, in its foothills and in its shadow, Pucón will never be able to sleep well. Either way, the now idyllic region's past has always proved anything but tranquil.
Mapuches: the Indigenous Messengers of La Araucania
The Mapuche are a group of indigenous ethnic groups that share the same social, religious and even economic base. There are around one million seven hundred thousand, almost 10% of the more than eighteen million inhabitants of Chile. 80% of all indigenous people in this South American nation. But, only about 200.000 speak their original dialects fluently mapudungun ou huiliche.
Throughout history, the Mapuche have come to influence and/or dominate almost all of Patagonia, which is now Chilean and Argentina. Submitted the mighty tehuelches and other indigenous peoples from the vast albiceleste pampa, an acculturation that became known for the Araucanization of Patagonia.
Mapuche Indian sculpture in Pucón
From 1540 onwards, the newly arrived Spanish conquerors and colonists ended this Mapuche supremacy. And they introduced the term arauco, the Hispanic adaptation of a Mapuche place ragko translated as muddy water. The term araucaria itself derives from such an adaptation.
That morning, for a good part of the afternoon, we alternated between the coniferous forest and the lakes, two or three more along the way: El Toro, Chico and Verde, a trio of neighbors linked by narrow streams of water.
Back to Pucón Riverside Shelter
We return to Pucón by bus, with our heads lolling forward, such was the accumulated fatigue.
The night creeps in. We anticipate it in La Poza, a sample of the bay of the city's great lake, called Villarrica, like the volcano that stands out from it to the south.
We pass by Vapor-Chucao, a ship built in 1905 and later brought to the lake to ensure round trips between Pucón and the village of Villarrica.
Almost 100 years later, this Vapor remains moored in front of the old Gudenschwager hotel, the oldest in Pucón, built in 1923 by a German settler, Don Otto Gudenschwager Becker. The ship's immobility once again contributed to that of the lake. Under the high pressures that had settled in the area, like the lakes of the PN Huerquehue, Villarica also seemed to have solidified.
Villarrica's Volcanic Omnipresence
Boat crosses Lake Villarrica, near Pucón
We sat and watched the sun spread to the west, over the opposite bank from which we were. During this popular astral process, a boatman appears out of nowhere. Cross the bay side by side. Its vigorous strokes shake the flow. In an instant, that sea of freshwater-oil-blue gains a surprising listed charm.
At the same time, the twilight blueness of the atmosphere highlights the white patches of the volcano's cone. And so the night unfolds. Until the absolute darkness that seized La Araucanía and Pucón convinced us to call the day closed.
No wonder, no compromise. It was above all with an already inexplicable enthusiasm that we dedicated the following day to exploring more of the region, following a road and walking route between waterfalls and other natural phenomena.
Jump after Jump, around Pucón
The elegance and good taste that Nature assumed there continued to dazzle us: the beautiful patterns of moss, lichen and earthy rock that lined the wall of the great Salto de la China, a fluvial dive with an impressive 70 meters.
The 70 vertical meters of Salto La China.
Also the Salto El Léon that followed, with an additional 20 meters and much more voluminous, in such a way that it irrigated an exuberant resident rainbow. And the autumnal glow of morning that penetrated the forest sideways and illuminated overhanging foliage; ferns and creeping bushes.
We were also enchanted by the passageways covered with sodden humus, dripping with bamboo branches. But as far as Nature is concerned, we had better stop there. Let's return to the people of Pucón.
In prospecting for the city market, we noticed the number of pine nuts for sale. Not just in quantity. In the quantity and diversity and hyperbolic size of most of them. Another thing we noticed are the different traits of the sellers.
The hyperbolic pine nuts generated by the large araucarias that Chileans call piñoneros.
We were in the heart of La Araucania. the abundance of pinoneros – that's what the Chileans call the araucarias – explained the profusion of succulent seeds. But, as we have already seen, La Araucanía also preserves the territorial core of the Mapuche.
The Long Mapuche Resistance
It was something that, shortly after entering the Chilean coast revealed by Fernão de Magalhães, the Spanish conquerors did everything to change.
Fate dictated that, at the end of the first half of the 1544th century, an onslaught carried out by Juan Bautista Pastene, a subject of the mastermind of the conquest of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia, had given rise to the long War of Arauco. It was fought for nearly three centuries – from 1818 to Chile's independence in XNUMX – against the resilient Mapuche.
During this period, the Mapuche resisted and caused widespread destruction in cities and colonial possessions. Around 1600, they even managed to demarcate a clear border, based on the expulsion of the Spaniards to more northern areas of slender Chile.
El Bosque bar employee in Pucón
In the XNUMXth century, the conflict became even more complex as the forces loyal to the Spanish Crown came to confront the newly formed independence activists. The Mapuche chiefs allied with the first, but the independence leaders triumphed.
From 1860 onwards, the army of independent Chile was finally focused on dominating the Mapuche. Despite the fierce resistance, the natives capitulated. Those who insisted on remaining on the lands – many of them handed over to settlers – were placed on reductions. After 150 years, it is in one of them that we find them.
The Mapuche Refuge of Quelhue
We head towards the Pucón O Minetue river. We follow its current full of rapids that we only leave when it surrenders to Lake Villarrica. We crossed another one, the Quilque. From then on, we proceeded along a gravel road to the outskirts of Quelhue. It took us a long time to find the place we didn't see indicated and, at least as we asked, no one seemed to know it.
Finally, there we meet Gabrielle, a teenager who explains the way to us. Soon, a communal house and one of the traditional large family groups, in full conviviality watered by Pisco and soft drinks, around a table. As Gabrielle had warned us, the mapuches they abhor the tourist flooding in their region that happens, year after year, from December to February.
Mapuche girl, at the entrance to the Quelhue reduction, on the outskirts of Pucón.
They reject all treatments in their community as attractions. With as much sensitivity as possible, we explained that we weren't exactly tourists, that we had arrived there alone, with nothing more planned and that we just wanted to get to know them, to know how they lived now.
They ended up inviting us to the table. We talked about everything a little bit but little or nothing of the sort of apartheid South American region in which the Mapuche have long lived. We drink pisco-sour. We ate empanadas. We insist a little more. Finally, the hosts allowed us to photograph them. We left Pucón with the memory of conviviality, humour, and open-mindedness. And their generous faces and smiles.
Much more than we were counting.
