IM
AG
ES
: JAMIE
LA
FFE
RT
Y
ere’s a story told in ash: a
person came out to walk their
dog along a track by the side
of a volcano — an undulating,
three-mile route defined by
bamboo and untidy bushes and
trees. To their left, the mighty
Osorno volcano stood tall and
intimidating beneath a high Chilean sky. The
dog wasn’t on a lead and — presumably before
the owner could react — it ran off. It had caught
the scent of a pudu (one of the world’s smallest
deer species), which it followed to a clearing.
The dog found tracks, stuck its nose to the
ground and tried to work out where its quarry
had gone. Eventually, the owner caught up,
retrieved their pet and, hopefully, got it under
better control. The unharmed pudu’s tracks
disappeared into the bushes.
Guide Marcelo Campos tells me this
story while looking at imprints in the granular,
grey earth. His forensic analysis is possible
thanks to an accumulation of detritus,
not from the nearby Osorno Volcano, but
Calbuco, around 10 miles away, which blew
its top in 2 015. Here in the heart of Chile’s
Lake District, it helps to know which eruption
from which volcano is responsible for the
landscape in front of you — and which is
likely to erupt next.
Media photographs of that particular
eruption are spectacular. It may have gone off
with the force of a nuclear bomb, generating
its own electrical storms as it spewed volcanic
matter into the sky, but there’s something
elemental and even beautiful captured in
the shots. The aftermath is decidedly less
photogenic. As I follow Marcelo along the path,
he stops to pluck some ripe murta berries and
show me some photos of Calbuco’s immediate
aftermath. In them, ash covers every surface,
knee deep in places.
“Look at this,” says the guide as we
approach the road at the end of our walk.
Banks of ash line the road like accumulated
snow. “Remember, this is from seven years
ago. When the eruptions happen, they’re
serious, no?”
No doubt they are, and the volcanoes are
the reason I’ve come here. Well, not just
them — also the lakes. Both abound in this
part of southern Chile, creating unforgettable
landscapes. I’d first come to this region as
a dusty backpacker, broke and clueless,
travelling between Patagonia and Santiago,
the capital, by bus, inexplicably in a hurry.
This time, I’m driving between the cities of
Puerto Varas and Pucón, now able to take
my time, no longer quite such an unwashed
desperado, no longer having to share dorm
rooms with strangers.
The only downside now is that I’m travelling
in April, during the austral autumn, which
means sacrificing the normal certainties that
come with Chile’s weather. On the first hike with
Marcelo — and during most of my time around
Puerto Varas and Lake Llanquihue — rain falls
with a vengeance. The only time it abates is one
evening when I look out from the Hotel Awa
as the sun tries its best to cut through a fog,
rainbows flitting in and out of the mist so faintly
and rapidly as to seem imagined.
H
104 NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.CO.UK/TRAVEL
CHILE
