Puyehue National Park

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Puyehue National Park is in southern Chile, in the Andes, spanning the Los Ríos and Los Lagos regions. The park covers about 1,070 square kilometers (around 413 square miles) and was established in 1941, with expansions in 1950 and 1981. It is Chile’s most visited national park, attracting tens to hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

The landscape combines evergreen forests with temperate rainforests, hot springs, and volcanoes such as Puyehue and Cordón Caulle, plus the Antillanca Group. The park has three main areas: Aguas Calientes, Anticura, and Antillanca, each offering different sights. Aguas Calientes has natural thermal baths and hiking trails. Anticura features the Puyehue volcano, the El Puma lookout, the Cordón Caulle, hot springs, a large 800‑year‑old coigüe forest, a waterfall, and several trails. Antillanca includes the Raihuén crater, Mirador hill, the Las Gaviotas River, Rupanco Lake, a ski center, and a year‑round hotel.

Inside the park there are five lakes: Constancia, Gris, Paraíso, Lake Berlin, and part of Rupanco Lake. The area has warden stations in each zone; the main administration is in Aguas Calientes, and there is a Center of Environmental Information. Anticura has a guard station and campsite; Antillanca has a ski center and a hotel.

Flora includes Valdivian temperate rainforest at lower elevations with trees like coigüe, ulmo, olivillo, and tineo; higher up, coigüe forests with tepa and mañío. There are also marshy areas called mallines. Mammals include puma, gray fox, quique, coypu, güiña, chingue, skunks, and vizcachas. Birds seen there include torrent duck, Magellanic woodpecker, Chilean pigeon, hued-hued, Andean condor, grebe, and buff-necked ibis.

Visitors can enjoy hiking, trekking, fishing, wildlife watching, swimming in heated pools, photography, climbing, horseback riding, snowboarding, downhill and cross-country skiing, mountain biking, and bird watching. The park is served by Chile Route 215, connecting with Argentina’s Route 231 through the Cardenal Antonio Samoré Pass, and lies about 118 miles northeast of Puerto Montt and 50 miles east of Osorno.

Climate is rainy year-round, with snow in winter and spring. Average temperature is about 8 C, rising to 10–18 C in summer. Annual rainfall is around 450 mm. In 2008, a government-approved hydroelectric project inside the park sparked controversy because it would be built by a private company within a public protected area.