A three-day northward journey by ocean-going ferry through the Patagonian fjords took us from the wilds of Patagonia to the lush, volcano-strewn landscapes of the Chilean Lakes District. It was here that Charles Darwin watched with awe as Volcan Osorno erupted, and shortly thereafter witnessed a major earthquake that transformed part of the coast, triggering his realisation that mountain ranges don’t simply exist – nature builds them. (It helped too when he later found marine fossils at 4,000 m elevation in the Andes.)
Vulcan Osorno was quiet when we were there, but Vulcan Llaima was steaming a little in its landscape of raw lava fields – and these remarkable forests of Monkey Puzzle Trees. There's no prize for guessing why these trees acquired that name. They are southern-hemisphere conifers of the genus Araucaria - in this case Araucaria araucana. The genus occurs in South America, Australia, New Guinea and New Caledonia and is perhaps best known via the widely-cultivated Norfolk Island Pine.