The volcano trail time schedule

The trail is guide by an Chilean arriero (as the chilean cowboys are called) and an English and Spanish speaking guide. We sleep in tents, all our luggage we take with us on the horses. Cooking, putting up the tents etc., will be done together by the group. Everyone should to their own ability, take care of their own horses.

This pack trip leads us to some unique and amazing landscapes: from dense rainforest to sandy, desert like high mountain areas to swampy highplanes and over snow covered passes.

This is a everchanging landscape, almost impossible to catch it in photos, you turn around a corner, cross a pass and you see one mountain ridge behind another, covered with the imense rainforests of the northern Patagonia.

This landscape to is fragile, plants grow extremely slow in these heights of the Patagonian Andes, ecological systems are very fragile, and should not be interfered or altered by e.g.bringing in other species.

On these trail rides we work closely with the administration of this part of the National Park in order to establish rules and regulations which allow us to do this ride minimizing the possible damage.

For that reason the number of excursions as well as the number of riders per tour is limited.

1.Day: In the morning after arrival at the camp, we get to know the horse and will practice handling horses and tack.
In the afternoon we take an inital ride crossing the Mapuche Indian Comunity Quelhue, decide which horse matches with which rider and which horses we will take with us. In the evening we go to our basecamp in the Villarrica National Park.

2.Day: After a hearty breakfast we saddle the horses and of we go. After riding through dense forest in the beginning, soon as we gain some height, we leave the woods and ride trough a hilly area, lower vegatation, bushes. At noon we reach the lava and snow fields in the shadow of volcano Quetrupillan.This is the kingdom uf the condor and we get a good chance to meet this giant bird. About 3 hours later we reach laguna azul, a deep blue lake, where we will set up the tents.

3.Day: From laguna Azul we are heading towards Laguna Blanca, crossing a huge field of volcanic stones and ride around an ancient side crater of Quetrupillan. From Laguna Blanca on the landscape changes  to a desert like lava sand area, interupted by fields of snow. our camp for this night we put up on the sandy beach of laguna patos.


4.Day: We ride down from the highplane through the Lenga forests of the puesco mountain range to the park ranger station were we wave goodby to the horseses and drive to the nearby Pangui Hotsprings, some natural hot springs right in the untouched forest, where we celebrate our horseback adventure with a typical chilean BBQ "Asado al Palo", were the meat is slowly roasted on  big bamboo sticks. At night we take our drinks in some relaxing hot pools.Time to let pass by all the impresions of the last days.

5.day: Time for another bath in the pools, or a walk in the suroundings before we head back home to Pucon in the evening.