Adelante!” comes the shout over the roaring waves. Arms orbiting forward, my paddle reaches deep into the raging Petrohué River. My feet are tucked tight inside the raft, my upper body leaning backwards towards the water. Deep reserves of newfound strength power us on. We rear up, slam down and get soaked in the process. “Alto! Stop!” With that, the six crew, and Catalina, our guide from Ko Kayak, raise our paddles in unison and let out a huge cheer. I’m sore, I’m wet and I couldn’t be happier. This is Chile’s Los Lagos region, a place of magic, where rivers flow down from the Andes, snow-covered volcanoes loom large and design-led hotels lean into the area’s traditional architecture, creating amazing places to stay. Catalina, black hair flowing from beneath her red helmet, green eyes glinting with glee, instructs us to paddle towards slacker water, where we pull up on a beach of volcanic ash. Leading our group up a small cliff, the gin-clear river below, she tells us it’s time for a leap of faith.
“Ok, jump over that bush,” she says, pointing towards a shrub growing horizontally from the rock face. “And remember, tuck your knees in.”
A paddleboarding excursion in the Los Lagos region of Chile
One peep on her life jacket’s whistle and I’m hurtling towards the water. Sound and fury envelop me and I emerge gasping, cranking out a messy front crawl back to safe ground. I’m thankful for my wetsuit and even more so that the water of the Petrohué is potable. I cup it in my hands, take a slurp and resume my position in the bow of the raft. I’d arrived in the country just 36 hours previously, flying on LATAM’s breezy route from Heathrow via São Paulo to Chile’s capital Santiago. There was time in this city of eight million to catch my breath, riding the funicular to the top of Cerro San Cristóbal, billed as Santiago’s green lung, from where a towering Virgin Mary looks out across the metropolis. I nursed a fortifying Pisco Sour in the bar atop Torre Gran Costanera, South America’s tallest building, as the sun dropped behind the Andes, and had a much-needed rest at the Le Meridien hotel downtown. As well as some occasional pampering, it was an adventure and the outdoors that I was in Chile for. The Los Lagos region is easily overlooked by those in search of thrills in the arid wilderness of the Atacama Desert to the north and the Torres del Paine at the country’s southern tip. Yet just a 90-minute flight south of Santiago is Puerto Varas, the jumping-off point into a place of wild beauty.
Before Catalina had given me my riverine adrenaline hit, I’d spent the morning with Luiz Felipe Diaz from Birds Chile, a tour operator run by local naturalists. Wearing a cord cap and rocking a salt-and-pepper beard, Diaz is everything you could ever want from a guide: mischievous, friendly and crazily knowledgeable. Our first port of call was a private nature reserve just short of Puerto Varas, which, he explained, was part of the Valdivian temperate rainforest, home to the ancient and endangered Alerce tree. One of these sky-high beasts, in nearby Alerce Costero National Park, was recently found to be 5,000 years old, the oldest tree in the world.
The trees, the mosses and lichens, and the birds are part of Pachamama, Mother Earth, revered across South America for the life she brings
“Everything here is very compact and grows slowly due to the colder weather,” he says as we follow a boardwalk deep into the woods. Soon, we are standing beneath the oldest Alerce in this section of forest, a relative pup at 1,000 years old and 40 metres high. When Charles Darwin came this way in the 19th century, he gave this species of cypress tree its Latin name, Fitzroya Cupressoides, after Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the HMS Beagle. When the Chilean government gave this area to German settlers in 1852, much of the forest was burned to the ground or logged for the Germanic housing found in towns throughout the region. Today, it is protected, although illegal logging remains an issue. Mercifully, this smaller reserve and the larger national park are thriving. Native bamboo crowds the path and the bark of every tree is a riot of green, life-giving mosses and lichens. It’s spring, and the canopy is starting to bloom with copihue, a fuchsia-like plant that is Chile’s national flower. Its bell shape is evolved for the hummingbirds which dart on high, allowing them to slide their beaks deep within the plant to drink its nectar.
By now, Diaz is in full flow, loquacious about the birdlife here. In particular, he’s keen for me to see a chucao. This tiny, robin-like bird has been singing its loud, fluting song all morning and we’re yet to catch sight of one. “Whenever people hear them, they look up,” says Diaz. “But they actually live and nest on the ground.” We stand in silence as he mimics their call. A reply comes and then another, before this bright, beautiful bird emerges on the path, giving us a quick look before dashing back into the undergrowth. Diaz explains that all of this – the trees, the mosses and lichens, the birds - is part of Pachamama, Mother Earth, revered across South America for the life she brings.
Heart rate finally restored to a normal rhythm after my afternoon adventure on the river, I spend the evening immersed in Pachamama again, this time in the company of chef Simon Hermosilla. Hermosilla is the head chef at Espantapájaros, or Scarecrow, a rural restaurant set above the banks of Lago Llanquihue, the cone of the Mount Osorno volcano standing high on the opposite side of the lake. The concept here is based around the stunning kitchen garden, where rhubarb, berries and greens grow in abundance. The food takes on both German and Chilean influences, with diners able to eat in the unchanged home of owner Cornelia Prenzlau’s parents as part of a private experience.
Rustic cedar shingles coalesce with modern design at the Refugio Chiloé hotel
An aerial shot of Refugio Chiloé and the surrounding lake
“What we care about is working with local producers and picking our own food,” says Hermosilla as he hands me a knife and I start cutting rhubarb leaves for our dessert. “We want to develop sustainable gastronomy and to empower producers.” All the ingredients come from less than 100 kilometres away, with almost all vegetables and herbs grown on-site. As Hermosilla sets to work on the barbecue, placing vast steaks over the coals, I take a seat inside with a glass of carménère, a rich, full-bodied Chilean red, and look out at golden hour over the lake. Southern lapwings bring nest material into the thick branches of pines while ibises cackle in the treetops. The meal is a triumph of simplicity, the meat complemented by creamy potatoes wrapped in charred lettuce leaves and shared around a table in the best family tradition. It speaks to a love of the simple things here, a deep reverence for the land and all it has to offer. Well-fed and ready to continue discovering this country’s immense wildlife, I hop aboard a boat the following morning and head out on the water. We’ve taken the ferry from Los Lagos to Chiloé, an island the size of Cyprus and second only in South America to Tierra del Fuego. Its waters are a haven for migratory birds, including a number of pinguinos. “There, there!” blurts Diaz, offering his binoculars as the boat’s engine dies and we bob past rocky outcrops. As I bring them to my eyes I can see one, and then two Magellanic penguins. The first of the season to arrive at their summer breeding grounds, one slides up the crags from the rolling waves as the other waddles into the undergrowth.
“We’re too early in the season for the Humboldt penguins,” says Diaz of the birds which use the current of the same name to make their way along the coast. In just 35 minutes, we see pelicans fussing on grassy knolls, kelp geese making grumpy noises on the rocks and a petrel stretching its enormous wings over the surf. Cut off from the rest of Chile, Chiloé feels a world apart, somewhere that Pachamama and the God which came with Jesuit missionaries seem to have come to a compromise and created a beguiling and otherworldly place.
Shelling mussels at Refugio Chiloé
With Diaz heading back to the mainland, I am in the safe hands of Cyril Christensen from Chiloé Natural for my time on the island. A friendly presence in a wide-brimmed hat, he is keen to show me not just the wildlife, but also the culture that thrives here. And there’s no better way to experience it than during a curanto. This ritual involves digging a deep pit into which large stones are thrown, along with firewood, before huge, hand-sized mussels, slabs of pork and chicken are tucked into the flames, along with the narrow, black potatoes which are endemic to the region. Everything is covered with umbrella-like rhubarb leaves and left to cook for an hour, giving Cyril time to show me around the waterside estancia where we are dining.
“That’s a whimbrel,” says Cyril, pointing to a wading bird pottering over the mud at low tide. ‘It’s just arrived from Alaska.” We do some quick maths and work out that’s a journey of almost 13,000 kilometres. Soon, it’s time to eat. As the leaves are removed from the firepit, a band plays local music, a unique mix of German accordion, Spanish guitar and the sounds of the Mapuche people who called this place home before anyone else. Cyril hands me a mussel; its flesh succulent and juicy, so big it doubles up as a starter. Soon we are eating broad plates of meat and potatoes, silence descending in the way that it always does when good food is served.
Mercifully, after all this time on the road, I have somewhere spectacular to rest my bones. Refugia Chiloé’s remarkable wooden design, raised on stilts, reflects the palafitos, the stilt houses found along the sheltered coasts around the island’s capital, Castro. The rooms are wood-panelled with landscape-picture windows drinking in views of the wetlands, vultures circling on thermals as royal terns and black-headed gulls potter in the mud. There are no TVs or a gym. If you want to move your body, you do so outside. The entire property is a byword for understated luxury, where modern design blends into the environment. The outdoor infinity pool isn’t heated and is no more than 5ºC when I drop in for an early evening dip, contrasting with the sauna’s 85ºC heat. The communal space’s sharp angles create incredible shadows as the day fades. I sip on a Negroni as the night sky lights up, the Southern Cross and Milky Way visible to the naked eye.
The design-forward spa at Refugio Chiloé
The next day, I take the five-minute boat ride across from the main island to Quinchao. It’s here where Sandra Naiman has lived her entire life. From the native Williche tribe, she has been tending to her garden and small holding for eight years, during which she has formed a bond with Tierra Chiloé, inviting their guests to learn about her life. In the 20 years prior, she worked in a salmon processing plant but was fired for being ‘too old’. Using the money she received in severance and the land which her grandparents first owned, she grew a vegetable garden and nursed native plants, all the while becoming the Chilean government’s designated guardian for seeds from Chiloé. She keeps these in a solar-powered, temperature-controlled container. “I am very proud of that,” she says as we stroll through her greenhouses, full of coriander and lettuce. “According to the government, I am a responsible person!”
As with Felipe, her love of Pachamama is inescapable. She strokes the drooping lichens which grow on the coihue tree, explaining how she uses them to dye wool and make her own clothes. Poppies and ceanothus grow everywhere. She explains that on the island everyone takes care of each other, almost symbiotically. Having spent just a few days here, I can really see how and why Chiloé is so tight-knit. It is a one-of-a-kind place, one that deserves every bit of love and protection it can get. “We are all the same in front of nature,” says Naiman as we drink tea in her simple wooden home. “It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor. Pachamama is everything.”
