Temuco to Santiago

There are several active volcanoes to the east of Temuco, such as Villarrica (2'840 m.a.s.l.) in the southeast and Llaima (3'125 m.a.s.l.) in Conguillo National Park. I wanted to go a little further northwest to Lonquimay. 

There is a circular route there, but I only wanted to drive part of it. The first destination after Temuco was Curacaution. A sleepy town with stores at the main road. Along the R 181 there are waterfalls, lakes, streams, large araucaria forests, the Sierra Nevada and volcanoes. I went to see the Salto de la Princesa and ignored the Salto Alaska. But I quickly got bored of this touristy vein. There are restaurants, rental shops (kayaks, bikes) and miradores on every corner, and I didn't really understand what you were supposed to see there.

In IOverlander I had chosen a few places. My first 2 options were in Malalcahuelo. Right on the Rio Cautin, but I don't imagine it to be idyllic. There is a ski resort at the foot of the Lonquimay and the R89 takes you higher into the mountains and you can stand next to mountain streams. Here I found it at 1,200 meters above sea level.

Second day and I wanted to do my own tour. Not via the village of Lonquimay to Liucura, but along the Cuesta las Raices (R89) into a Mapuche area. Every time I went out to take photos, I smelled the araucarias. The trees and the forest are so impressive. On the ridge, I walked 100 meters up to the Mirador PataChoique. The Lonquimay Volcano (2'865 m.a.s.l.) and the Tolhuaca Volcano ( 2'806 m.a.s.l.) tower to the west, the Llaima Volcano (3'125 m.a.s.l.) and the Sierra Nevada to the south

Up here I noticed this dust for the first time, not sand, but fine black dust. The operator of the Mirador PataChoique explained to me that this was volcanic dust deposited by the Lonquimay during one of the eruptions in the last century. If you drive over these dust tracks by car, you leave a very long cloud behind you.

On the way down into the valley, I also passed a former ski resort. I wanted to continue my tour on the dust track in Valle Naranjo along the R801 to the R785. The valley is Mapuche territory, nothing touristy, but nature and araucaria forests. Simply breathtaking and I don't use that word often. The most beautiful valley in Chile so far. 

Slowly uphill, all dirt road and the higher you get, the more dust the Dog.O.Mobil stirs up. At first I had a headwind and the dust cloud was behind me, but on a descent the wind turned and suddenly I was riding in the middle of the dust cloud. It didn't help, so I accepted that the dust was also getting into the interior through the air vents. Then came the surprise. Without warning, I couldn't get any further. A small bridge was no longer there. When I looked later, it was only about 3 km to the junction.

I wasn't annoyed that I had to drive through this beautiful valley a second time, but the dust!

2 hours later I was back in my seat and saw the disaster. At first I thought the driver's compartment was dusty, but then I realized that the entire living area was covered in dust. I cleaned the bed in a makeshift manner, blew the dust away with the ARB compressor and washed myself in the cold mountain stream. I spent the whole day cleaning. To be honest, days later I was still finding dust in compartments where I thought dust would never get in.

At 9:00 in the morning it was still fresh, around 4-7 degrees, but I had breakfast outside in the sunshine. I couldn't bring myself to go for a hike, but I baked a protein banana chocolate cake and wrote a blog.

After a few days, I made my way north. But first I went up to Volcán Lonquimay and Tolhuaca.  At first, the R785 is paved, with a few potholes, but at the height of the Corralco Resort (approx. 1'400 m above sea level), the forest and greenery give way to the anthracite of the volcanic sand. I feared the worst, but this fine dust only blows on a few stretches. I parked the Dog.O.Mobil on the side of the road at around 1'700 m.a.s.l. and made my way to a nameless hill in the east at around 2'100 m.a.s.l. From the top you could see Llaima to the south and Callaqui to the north.  

Hiking in this lunar landscape was impressive, but even more impressive were the tracks of the cars driving up here. 

The Chileno doesn't go to the beach or up the mountain, even if he gets there by car!

At some point I had to head north. I actually wanted to go shopping at a Lider in Los Angeles, then take a look at the Salto del Laja and spend the night at a campsite there. It took me just over 4 hours to cover the 250 km, including shopping. 

I don't know what I was thinking, but the Salto del Laja was totally overcrowded. It was by far the biggest tourist attraction in South America so far. It took me 205 minutes to walk the 2.5 km in the village. Crowds of people crowded the road and the waterfall. Not my thing. Plan B was a place in Ñipas on the Rio Itata, about 100 km overland. The landscape was varied and from La Cascada Liucura Bajo I drove along a canal through fruit and vegetable fields (N888). In hindsight, I should have stayed here, in a grove on the Rio Itata with the locals .

Around Quillón there were “vineyards” and street vendors selling tomatoes and other vegetables. In Quillón, I bought 2 bottles of wine and 1 kg of tomatoes at a street stall.

The parking space in Ñipa, by now it was 18:00, became a problem. I saw it, but couldn't find a way down to the Rio Itata. Frustrated, after 30 minutes I drove on to Plan C, a campsite at the mouth of the Rio Itata. Estimated travel time 1:45 h.

The route was perfect except for the last 20 km from Treguaco. After Treguaco it was Rippio at sunset. Sometimes you couldn't see anything because of all the dust.  At 20:15 I arrived at my parking space north of Mela. By now I didn't care how beautiful it was, I just wanted to eat something and have a beer.

The next morning I saw that it was a mixture of garbage tip and beach. So not for me.  I learned something new and chose several places along the coast for the day. The Ruta del Mar in the south is rugged and beautiful, with few villages, lots of forest and many individual houses and farms. Some of the houses on the cliffs are architecturally sophisticated. 

Apart from the beach and the cliffs, there wasn't much to see. But there were a few sights that were worth a stop. At the usual attractions, such as the Iglesia de Piedra, a rock in the sea, there were no more free parking spaces. Instead, I ate empanadas in a small restaurant. I found the Memorial Beach near Santa Rita interesting. A kind of memorial on the cliffs.

At the Arcos de Calán I thought to myself, if only a German "ÖKO" would see this. The Chileans drove the last 50 m to the cliffs by car. The descent to the beach was not really a path

Curanipe, I was told, is mainly known for its fishermen and fish markets, but is increasingly being taken over by surfers and bathers.

From Cobquecura, there were bus tours to the coastal towns as well as individual tourism. The coastal towns offered markets, beaches, restaurants and I also saw 3 circuses on the beach. The further north I drove, the longer it took to drive through a town. 

It took me over 4 hours to cover the 200 km that day and with sightseeing and eating it was 18:30 again before I arrived at Camping Municipal La Trichera. It was windy and fresh, but there was enough space for my motorhome in the parking lot. There were also cabins with barbecues, tables and benches, but they were fully booked until the end of February. La Trichera is located at the northern end of the Putu dune. I hadn't seen much of the dune of Putu, except that the beach was endless and there were only a few anglers and horse riders out and about in the weather.

It was the second time that the morning on the Ruta del Mar had been foggy. The motorhome was damp, as if it had rained. The wind drove clouds of dust (in ES: bruma) across the beach and inland. I could forget about having breakfast outside. 

Let's see what there is further north. After all, it was still almost 400 km along the coast to the airport in Santiago. I had to do laundry again, “dust off” the camper and carry out two minor repairs.

I looked for pitches by rivers or the sea. Surprisingly, the closer I got to Valparaíso, there weren't as many with good ratings. I wanted to do the first test near Pichilemu on the Estero Nuevo Reino.

As far as Hualañé, there were still large strawberry fields and vegetable crops. I saw the first mountain ridges that had been systematically deforested and, of course, reforested with conifers. The longest ridge worked in this way was about 15 km long. Vineyards were seen somewhat less frequently.

On the J-70-I, the terrain became more hilly and vegetable cultivation gave way to timber farming and cattle breeding. I had already seen some large timber processing plants. One was for power generation and the other for cellulose production.

On the I 660, I didn't know what I was seeing at first. It took me a while to realize that I was seeing huge plantations of olive trees, with some fruit growing in between. 

I knew that Google Maps would not lead me to my destination and drove through eucalyptus and coniferous forests, along streams and over hills to the Estero Nuevo Reino. The river flowed idyllically through the hills at 22 degrees, surrounded by shady pine forests. But I wasn't the only one who had come up with this idea. But the worst thing was that I couldn't find a spot that didn't end in sand. I could have cried, but I had to go all the way back and continue along the coast.

On a Sunday, all hell broke loose on the I500, Punta de Lobos was one big traffic jam and the detour was time-consuming. It was market day in Pichilemu and almost nothing was going on. I bought a few chocolate-crusted strawberries from a street vendor and later drove on in a convoy. 

Pichilemu is famous for its waves and surfers from all over the world come here. The surfing competition of the 2023 Pan American Olympics was held here, I didn't even know there was such a thing! 

The cliffs of La Boca were my destination. What did I see that day, not much apart from cars, crowds of people and a hazy sky. The coastal region is the recreational area of Talca and it was summer vacation!

I wouldn't call La Boca cool, but it was the best place on the Pacific in days. T

he next day I took my clothes to the laundry, checked out tourist spots like Matanzas and as the afternoon wore on I realized I needed to get away from the coast. Compared to the Costa de Araucanía, money has been invested in tourism here, a lot of money!

For dinner, I had homemade chorrillana (what we would call fried potatoes, onions, sausages and fried eggs) with cucumber salad and a red wine that Lorena and Mauro (from Santiago) had given me as a gift.

The next morning: zero visibility! In the fog, you couldn't see 25 meters on the steep slope. Time for me to set off in the direction of Santiago to pick up Marcus. Before that, I had to make a second attempt to “dust off” the camper van.  I had chosen a campsite at Embalse Rapel. There weren't that many opportunities to charge water on the route, so a campsite was the obvious choice. 

There is not really much to report about the 150 km. It got warm (over 30 degrees) and the color of the landscape changed to brown. Large olive groves, vineyards and pig farms. I smelled it along the G84 before I saw the large, flat fattening stables and also drove past the first pig transporter. I was amazed, as I hadn't seen much pork in the supermarkets. If you google “gauchos discover the pig” or something similar, you can find information about it. Of the 50 largest pork producers (together holding around 16.5 million sows), 24 are from China, 12 from the USA, 4 from Brazil, 3 each from Spain and Russia, 2 from Thailand, 1 from South Korea and only one from Chile. I must have smelled the one Chilean company