Adventure Travel in Villarrica, Caburgua and Pucon

Adventure Travel in Villarrica, Caburgua and Pucon

14 Diciembre 2011

While many flock to the adventure sports and resorts of Pucon, if you’re looking to escape steep prices and busy beaches, there’s a wealth of sometimes overlooked treasures just a few miles away.

Katie Manning >
authenticated user Corresponsal

The mountainous Araucania Region of southern Chile offers thirsty travelers the chance to drink in a snow-capped volcanoscape and dive into the fresh lake waters that puddle around the surrounding peaks. Many Chileans will tell you that Puncon and the lake region wins the prize for the most preciosa, or charming and enchanting, area in Chile.

 While many flock to the adventure sports and resorts of Pucon, if you’re looking to escape steep prices and busy beaches, there’s a wealth of sometimes overlooked treasures just a few miles away.

Villaarrica

For the tranquil traveler seeking a serene escape with a killer volcano view and modern amenities, drive about 50 miles south from the Temuco airport and pull into lakeside town, Villarrica.

The town itself is dotted with wooden cafes, hotels and restaurants, but also caters to locals. It’s architecture fuses natural and hip design. At the edge of the town, Pontificate Catholic University of Chile is housed in a modern ship-inspired building that threatens to plunge into the lake.

On the shore, a school of red paddleboats float beside a dock ferrying passengers toward the ash-rimmed volcano that wafts wisps of steam.

A picturesque two-lane road skirts around the slate-blue water and carries beachgoers, joggers and bike riders to Playa Pucara, Playa Verde and Playa Bonito. Sleek lake houses stretch down the right-hand side of the lane, while purple fields of lavender grow abundantly thanks to the lava-spiked soil.

You might drive past a group of indigenous Chileans from the Mapuche community circling together in a grassy plot to preform a ceremony. You’re almost certainly going to encounter their roadside stalls filled with fresh produce like strawberries and avocados.

Pucon

Continue down the path, and you’ll begin to breath in the newly sanded wood smell of the lake cabin meets Flintstones-chic town of Pucon, which tempts vacationers from all over the world. The area is famed for it’s adventure sports like rafting, hiking, sailing, fly fishing, bird watching, hot springs, splunking through volcanic caves and horseback riding through the mountain trails.  

In the winter, skiers and snowboards of all levels climb to the Pucon Resort. They carry home a trump card in their pockets of having shredded the slopes of an active volcano.

The rust-painted wood and gray-stone architecture throughout the town springs out from two beaches on the Villarrica Lake. The first beach docks mini yachts. A jetty overflowing with thick greenery separates the neighboring beach, which is covered with gray sand thanks to past volcanic eruptions. Sunbathers swarm in the summer (January and February) to soak up rays in the midsts of a spectacular view of two volcanoes, the lake and mountains.

Through the town you’ll find high-end sporting shops, boutique hotels and resorts, artisanal goods, adventure and ecotourism companies, and restaurants serving everything from Chilean staples (local cheeses, Wagyu beef, empanadas, salmon, etc.) to sushi or Italian plates. After a day of exercise and exploration, the town offers all-hours entertainment at touristy bars, clubs and a casino.

Curabregue and  Ojo del Caburgau

To escape the crowds at Pucon drive about 15 miles further and take a left into the bumpy driveway of Ojo del Caburgau. A short path skipping over tangled roots opens up into a trifecta of waterfalls. Two five-meter falls face eachother and hose water into a pool that seems too sapphire blue to exist.

Keep going and you’ll catch the glimmer of sunken Chilean pesos that wishful thinkers whipped into the stream.

At the last fall, the sun spears though the trees lighting up a crystal clear view of fish weaving through a graveyard of massive tree trunks.

Just a few miles further, you’ll come to a lesser known - but also less commercialized – beach at Lago Caburgua. Trees prehistorically enormous grow in the sand offering visitors plots of shade to picnic in the breeze. Here travelers won’t have to hunt for a place to put down a towel. A scattering of cafes and restaurants are along the beachfront. A few dozen venders tuck their carts selling wooden and wool crafts in a forest corner.

 

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  • Adventure Travel in Villarrica, Caburgua and Pucon
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