Parque Nacional Alerce Andino

After getting a taste of large alerce trees at Pumalin we wanted to see even bigger ones, and the only place to do that is at the national park. Being only 40km from Puerto Montt, the park is relatively easy to get to and we set off the day after returning from Chiloe.

We woke up early to catch the 7:40 bus since the next wouldn´t be till noon. Because of the cold the previous night EVERYTHING was covered in frost (which stayed until about 11:30). The bus dropped us off 13km from the park, so we had some walking to do, but some friendly lumberjacks offered us a ride in the back of their pickup, awesome.

The park receives somewhere around 4000mm of rain a year so everything was wet, muddy, and smelled like that. The foot bridges that were built over the muddy parts had been covered in an algae or something similar and were incredibly slippery (I must have fallen hard at least 6 times). We saw some very large alerce (larch) trees, some around 2500 and 3000 years old and around 3-4m diametre. Similar to the largest one at Pumalin. The only disappointing part of the trek was that the log bridge 10 minutes from Catedral Alerce had collapsed and there was no way to cross the river otherwise. Luckily, these alerce aren´t the largest in the park but are "just" a particularly beautiful stand.