The struggles we had to get the car have finally started to pay off.  We spent the last few days camping in scenic spots around Huerquehue National Park and a lake town called Lican Ray.  The camping spot in Huerquehue National Park was amazing!  Maybe one of the most scenic and peaceful spots we’ve camped in (including New Zealand campsites).

The road to Huerquehue National Park was once again another rough gravel road, which we used the car’s trusty 4WD for. Buying a car with 4WD has already paid off immensely!  We found a campsite just a couple of minutes outside the National Park, a paddock at the back of a house.  It had good facilities, a nice pier on the lake, and lots of soft grass which makes for comfortable camping.  It was also a quiet campsite with not too many people around.

Tent is behind the car, nicely blending in with the scenery!

View from our campsite, great swimming spot!

The water was amazing – so clear and not that cold at all!

While there we went swimming in beautiful clear and warmish water, sunned ourselves, read a bit and went on a lovely day hike in the National Park. Huerquehue National Park is surrounded by verdant old-growth forests and is meant to be one of the shining stars in the Chilean chain of national parks.  In other words, we were in for a treat!  It is a 125 square km reserve with rivers and waterfalls, alpine lakes, araucaria forests and a long list of interesting creatures including the pudú (the world’s smallest deer), tarantula like Spiders and lots of lizards!  The trail we did was the Los Lagos trail, which climbed from 700m to 1300m through dense forest and had nice views of the Villarica volcano, rushing waterfalls, and pristine lakes. We took our time with this walk as there were lots of things to see on the way up!

Volcano Villarica

Los Lagos Trail

Spot the lizard!

Lago Toro

Running low on food supplies we decided to shout ourselves dinner out, so we finished the hike off with a visit to Refugio Tinquilco, a private refugio inside the National Park.  It was built by a few eccentrics and creatives who wanted a place to get away from it all.  We had an amazing dinner here, with one of the highlights being mashed potatoes with avocado! It was also our most expensive meal out, but worth it!

Refugio Tinquilco where we had dinner – beautiful building!

Piggies!

Huerquehue was a really amazing spot for camping and we were sad to leave it, as it was the first time we’d started to relax.  Our next camping spot was outside the lake-resort town of Lican Ray.  We weren’t too impressed with the town itself, and were astounded with just how wrong the Lonely Planet guidebook got it again.  It’s happened a bit!  Accommodation picks from Lonely Planet have been way off so far, both in the summary about the places and also the prices. We’ve had the most luck when we’ve stayed in place sans-Lonely Planet.  Anyway, the campsite we found outside of Lican Ray was once again outside of town, and the paddock at the back of a farmer’s house.  Beautiful spot, with grand panoramic view so of Lago Calafquén and the islands on it.  We loved the campsite but not so much the birds that harped on all night.  It was so bad that the farmer and the farmer’s neighbour got up several times throughout the night to fire their shot guns at the birds.  Didn’t seem to help however!

View from our campsite in Lican Ray – rather beautiful!

Yep, this is the good life!

Onwards to Valdivia, the capital of the Los Ríos region.  We decided to visit the town after a tip from my father who visited here on a trip to South America many years ago.  It’s the most attractive town we’ve come across so far on the trip.  Lots of interesting things to do and see here including an anthropology museum, old Spanish forts, and a unique rainforest park close by.  It’s extremely pretty here and we love the relaxed vibe. There is also a beautiful waterfront for running/walking along and we’ve done that a couple of times.  A stinky fish market, chocolate stalls and morbidly obese sea lions are some of the sights we’ve seen on the waterfront! Today it is raining, so we’re doing a few errands.  It’s our first day of rain in a while, the last time was a day of downpour and traffic jams in Santiago so it’s safe to say that we’ve been very lucky with the weather so far! We have a few things to do here, like getting insurance for Argentina and extra gear for the car before heading to more deserted areas like Chiloé and the Carretera Austral.