Puyehue National Park

Puyehue National Park, about 80 km east of Osorno on the road to Argentina, is one of the more rewarding national parks in the Los Lagos region. The park covers 107,000 hectares of Valdivian temperate rainforest, highland moorland, and volcanic landscape around the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcanic complex. The Aguas Calientes thermal spring complex near the park entrance is the most visited part — a series of outdoor pools fed by geothermally heated water, surrounded by forest, and open year-round.

The trekking inside the park ranges from short walks from the Aguas Calientes area to multi-day routes into the high volcanic interior. The Antillanca ski resort sits within the park boundaries and operates in winter. The crossing to Argentina via the Cardenal Samoré pass passes through the park and is one of the most scenic border crossings in southern South America.

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In June 2011, the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcanic complex inside the park erupted with little warning, sending an ash column 12 km into the atmosphere and blanketing towns across Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. Buenos Aires, 1,500 km away, closed its airport. The eruption continued for nearly a year and deposited so much pumice in Lago Nahuel Huapi that Argentine fishermen reported it forming floating islands. The landscape around the eruption site is still visibly scarred — a raw field of grey pumice stretching for kilometers.

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