And we venture into the wild...

After a day of pure relaxation, we felt prepared to tackle " one of the star park attractions of Chile", Parque Nacional Huerquehue.  This lush green forest packed with gushing waterfalls, placid lakes and brimming with wildlife, is situated just one hour by bus from Pucón.  There are three buses there, and three buses back each day, and unless you want to be ruffing it in the great outdoors with no equipment, being punctual for the last bus back at 5.30pm is essential!

A very misleading map!!

With that in mind, we took the time to seek advice from one of the many park ranger on arrival as to the best trails to follow in the time we had.  He assured us that we could easily do the lakes trail to visit the star attraction, the Laguna Verde, famed for its emerald waters.  As I had already spoken to Chilean friends about the beauty of this lake, and it was also mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide, I felt extremely motivated to reach it and see it for myself.  The guide assured us many times that the lakes trail, there and back, could be done easily in five hours, leaving us plenty of time for stopping, taking photos and admiring the scenery, as long as we were fit and healthy.  Believing that were both of those things, we set off on our journey after a quick breakfast of bread, cheese and coffee.

After one hour's walking, we were in high spirits and looking forward to reaching our destination.  After a pleasant stroll through the woods circling the first lake, we started to encounter difficulties.  It transpired that the guard had neglected to tell us a very important detail regarding the trail.  It was practically vertical!!!

At 1pm we had reached an altitude of 1000m above sea level, and as far as we could tell, we hadn't even reached the middle of the trail!  Without a map, gps, the stars or any other form of navigation or way of knowing how close to the lakes we were, it would have been a large risk to carry on in case we could not make it back down for the bus.

As a compromise, particularly as I was feeling pretty disappointed at not seeing the Laguna Verde, we decided to take two detours to visit the waterfalls in the valley.  We knew that this decision had been the right one when we saw the water jumping from rock to rock and cascading to a plunge pool, although it was still a lot of effort to descend into the valley and back up again to the trail.

We made it back to civilization with forty five minutes to spare, and decided to visit the small local shop located in the park.  We had coffee and conversed with the shop owner, who had been kind enough to keep our belongings for us while we had been in the park.  While sitting on the bench outside, we met Navidad (Translation: Christmas), a large, juicy turkey that judging by its slightly cruel name, was due to be served up for Christmas dinner soon.




As we made our way onto the bus, we were surprised to see that hardly anyone looked as tired as we felt.  It made us wonder how far they had made it up the steep steep slope.  We came to the conclusion, as we had not seen any of the groups on the ascent or descent, that actually nobody reaches the lakes, but nobody tells the guards and they all just pretend that they made it.  Therefore the guards don't know its nearly impossible for the average adult and continue to tell everyone that it is easily achievable in five hours!

At least that's our theory and we are sticking to it!

Despite not reaching our destination, the forests of this place of natural beauty were enchanting.  Walking through the wilderness I felt as if I was on a film set and at any moment a magical creature would jump out at me.  I would definitely recommend visitors of this area of Chile to visit the Parque Nacional Huerquehue.