Struan and Anna in Chile: Puerto Varas January 2011: Volcán Osorno and Casas Patronales!

So here's the second of our more detailed posts describing our travels in the south of Chile back in January 2011, which we were only able to summarise in one post before. We left Valdivia to head down further into the Chilean Lake District to a small town called Puerto Varas. Like Valdivia, Puerto Varas was dominated by German immigrants, but unlike Valdivia it has stayed small and so quite uniformly retains its Northern European heritage in its architecture. Puerto Varas is also an adventure sports place, with the feel of an out of season ski resort: its other striking features are the Lago Llanquihue and huge snow-capped Volcán Osorno which sits across from the lake.

As we write this it has rained in Santiago, which clears away the smog, and there has been a dump of snow in the Andes, so we are getting a fantastic view of the city surrounded by snowy mountains - it's not just the south of Chile that is spectacular.

Puerto Varas definitely has a lovely alpine feel to it, in part due to the smell of wood-burning stoves (like in Chillan last year):

our hostel

the cosy room!

the right kind of dog for here

watching kayak school

kayak school

We talked in our Valdivia post about the large amount of historic German immigration to this part of Chile. Puerto Varas has successfully preserved many of the houses built by the original settlers, broadly speaking between about 1880 and 1930. Here are some examples of that architectural legacy, which gives Puerto Varas the Northern European feel it retains today:

a modern version keeping up standards

friendly guys who insisted we take a photo of them while we were looking at the houses - mainly though they were interested in looking at Anna

close up of the cladding technique

piggy bank

While all of these houses are unarguably reminiscent of a "Northern European" style, while we're making these bold statements we guess this does beg the question of what is a classic traditional Chilean style house. It's not an easy question to answer because the mix of immigration has led to many different styles - Santiago's traditional architecture is either the 19th century monumental architecture, which is mainly french inspired and designed:

Anna's campus

... or the few remaining examples of the earlier Spanish colonial architecture:

... the striking architecture in Valparaiso is mainly British inspired:

Georgian style, with sash windows, in colourful corrugated iron

We suppose that something like this:

traditional Chilean building from Chillan

... is traditional and fairly ordinary and ubiquitous to the central and northern parts of Chile. A very commonly seen style that is recognisably South American/ Southern European. Anyway, as we're talking about how different the architecture down in Puerto Varas is, we thought it might be useful to show what it's different from.

Back to Puerto Varas:

the epic scale church

While on this subject we'll post some more photos from Valdivia, because one of the best Casas Patronales is there: Casa Anwandter that we mentioned in the Valdivia post. This house is now a museum maintained by the Universidad Austral, so you can go inside and see what a wealthy 19th century German colonist's house might have looked like inside (though it should be remembered that Karl Anwandter became one of the wealthiest people in Chile so it's not necessarily that representative).

Casa Anwandter

the Anwandter Family

as grand as the house is, you can see that the ceiling is just painted boards

this is either the first Piano ever to have arrived in Chile (that happens to have been made in England), or the first British made Piano ever to have arrived in Chile - we can't quite work it out (and the guide signs were in English!) and being lawyers/ English teachers we can't help ourselves but to make a fuss about it - but the first option seems more remarkable so we'll go with that.

another casa patronal in Valdivia

So that's part of the architectural legacy of the German immigrants in Chile, good stuff.

There's plenty of action to be had in Puerto Varas. We decided to do a bit of mountain biking, with a guide, up to and along the base of the volcano so we could get a closer look. We've put some pics below, it was an awesome day but tough going with the heat, terrain, and these dreadful blue bottle like things that only come out in summer to suck your blood. Anna cried once only, fell off her bike twice, and was angry three times. On balance it was worth it, as it was fun and we got to see the volcano and some other good views up close - but Anna will never forget the significance of the word "mountain" in "mountain biking"...

Struan and our guide reach the grey barren line of an ancient lava flow

Anna crossing the grey stretch to re-enter the forest on the other side

the volcano looms large

it's difficult to explain how tasty that ice-cream top looks when you're roasting hot and thirsty!

Anna and our guide back in the woods

Struan with a CONAF Ranger

after all that, time for a snack, but who are those sneaky characters in the background?

ah ja, zorros

snuffle

While outside of Puerto Varas, we should include this photo of our friend Paulos somewhere green around Puerto Montt (a few kilometres south of Puerto Varas), on a journey down south during their visit to Chile in March when they stayed in Puerto Varas. This is an area which we haven't been able to explore all that much, as our next step from Puerto Varas/ Puerto Montt was on to the island of Chiloe (next post...), so we're glad Paulos and Caroline were able to go and tell us about it.