Booking our February/March 2016 passage on the Oceania Regatta from Lima, Peru to Buenos Aires, Argentina we started early, Spring 2017. We made two excellent choices: a stateroom with balcony on the port side. Waking each morning we were treated to views of the shoreline. On the morning of February 15, 2016 as we sailed the Chacao Channel toward Puerto Montt I was up 4:15 am before the sun rose to photograph our approach to the city.
I knew a classic 8,701 foot high stratovolcano topped with glaciers, named Orsorno, was out there and, amazingly, appeared on the horizon, seventy five miles distant to the northeast outlined by the gathering dawn. The sky was just brightening from total darkness at this time.
Postings last week featured the symmetrical, haunting cone of Orsorno and I have more images and stories to share of this quiescent horror in waiting. Today you will learn of another stratovolcano just 16 miles from Orsorno, also ancient; unlike Orsorno, misshapen and a current threat to local residents.
Calbuco is its name, taken from an indigenous language, “Blue Water” in English. It must refer to the water of Lake Llanquihe. As we drove Road 225 Calbuco was on one side, to the south, the lake on the other. When we visited Petrohué Falls, the river forms a southern boundary to the Llanquihue National Reserve from which Calbuco rises.
April 2015 Eruptions
Where we planned out trip, nine months before this day in February 2016, Calbuco erupted without warning with explosions one step below that of Mount St. Helen’s 1980 event. The volcanic plume of ash and cinders reached more than 10 kilometers ( 6+ miles ) high. It was fortunate the wind direction took the ash away from the nearby cities of Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt. Each is about 17 miles from Calbuco. As it was, the catastrophe destroyed crops and made farmers lives difficult. Farmers and the residents of the rural village Ensenada, nine miles away, evacuated to save their lives. Abandoned farm animals perished. Village residents returned to homes, roads, gardens covered in ash.
Here is a photograph of an ash and cinder drift from the explosion, just off Road 555 on the slopes of Orsorno volcano, above Ensenada village.
Click any photograph for a larger view.
Settlement Beneath Active Volcanos
At the start of the 18th Century the provinces around Lake Llanquihe were thinly populated. The government of Chile, in anticipation of seizure of the land by European powers, cooperated with efforts of German emigres to resettle German families fleeing a disorderly revolution. Today the region show the cultural influence of these settlers. Here is the exterior of the Club Alemain (“German Club”), the restaurant along Road 225 were we had an excellent lunch.
Look closely at the chimney. The stones are black and porous, volcanic cinders from Calbuco eruptions.
German settlers were there to witness, and suffer, the 1893-1895 Calbuco eruptions, one of the most explosive experienced in Southern Chile. Debris was ejected eight kilometers with large flows of hot mud. Farmers on the eastern shore of Lake Llanquihe petitioned the government to be resettled elsewhere. Without options, many remained.
Here is a view of the monster, a threatening presence to the south. That is vapor from the active caldera. Today, people live here, enjoying the current moments of their surroundings.
Calbuco Volcano, February 15, 2016
Click me for the first post in this series, “Orsorno Volcan
o and Tourists.”
Copyright 2022 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
A user commented on a Chile Lake District post of mine asking for more photos of Germany. This is striking, because German traveler who visited have made note of parallels between this area and Europe. In this series I will share photography taken from the tour bus window as we traveled to the Lake District and returned to Puerto Montt. I used a handheld Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III SLR with the Canon lens EF 70-300 f 4-5.6LIS. This is the second post of this series.
Click any photograph for a larger view.
Chipped into Shingles?
Wood is a building material the German pioneers had in abundance. They went to work clearing the forests, tilling the land and building structures such as this, a house in the town of Puento Varas on Lake Llanquihue. In face, those windows face the lake. I have our guide to thank for these photographs of the houses, early on as we drove through Puerto Montt she shared the significance of the shingles with us.
The shape is identical to that used in Germany and Switzerland wooden frame homes. It was the wood of a tree native to Chile and western Argentina that made these possible and in the course of surviving in a new land, a good portion of their natural patrimony was spent. Since the late 1960’s Chile has backed away from this and conservation of the slow growing Alerce is now paramount.
We can intuit how difficult the winters are from the view into this house provided by the window. There is a room outside the living area, sealed by a second door to prevent the escape of warmth. The use of metal embedded into the low concrete wall is common in the South American countries we visited.
Close by, also facing the lake in Puerto Varas, is this police station, the “Civil Police,” whatever than means. It is a small, apparently historic, building. Rising around it are modern hotels.
This large rural shed, on the outskirts of the town, appears to be a structure from the original 19th century settlers, a testimony to the durability of Alerce shingles covering the siding and the large, steeply sloped roof.
Open Country
Suddenly we were graced with these cleared farm fields, here and there large modern homes high on the hill for a sweeping view of the lake.
In the distance is Calbuco, the volcano whose eruption broke the peace ten months before our trip. The wind spared these lands the destructive effect of falling ash.
Copyright 2019 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A user commented on a Chile Lake District post of mine asking for more photos of Germany. This is striking, because German traveler who visited have made note of parallels between this area and Europe. In this series I will share photography taken from the tour bus window as we traveled to the Lake District and returned to Puerto Montt. I used a handheld Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III SLR with the Canon lens EF 70-300 f 4-5.6LIS. This is the third post of this series.
Click photograph for a larger view.
Orsorno Volcano, Lakes District, Chile
Copyright 2019 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A user commented on a Chile Lake District post of mine asking for more photos of Germany. This is striking, because German traveler who visited have made note of parallels between this area and Europe. In this series I will share photography taken from the tour bus window as we traveled to the Lake District and returned to Puerto Montt. I used a handheld Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III SLR with the Canon lens EF 70-300 f 4-5.6LIS. This is the fourth post of this series. Click me for “Swiss Chalet,” the first post in this series.
Click any photograph for a larger view.
……on cut grass rolled into hay below the volcano
Here is a comforting sight for a dairy farmer: well cured fodder ready for the winter. Apologies to William Carlos Williams. “So much/ depends/upon a red wheel /barrow/glazed with rain/water/besides the white /chickens.” (XXII, “Spring and All”, 1923).
On one side was Calbuco Volcano, seen across hay fields and hills……
……on the other is the lower slopes of Osorno, the cone hidden by clouds.
On the east side of where the waters of Rio Pescado flow into Lake Llanquihue the Holy Cross Chapel serves silent testimony to the influence of German immigrants who, fleeing war and chaos, settled these lands.
Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A user commented on a Chile Lake District post of mine asking for more photos of Germany. This is striking, because German traveler who visited have made note of parallels between this area and Europe. In this series I will share photography taken from the tour bus window as we traveled to the Lake District and returned to Puerto Montt. I used a handheld Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III SLR with the Canon lens EF 70-300 f 4-5.6LIS. This is the first post of this series. Click me for “Orsorno Volcano and Tourists,” the first post in that series.
Click any photograph for a larger view.
House on a Hill
Wood is a building material the German pioneers had in abundance. They went to work clearing the forests, tilling the land and building structures such as this, the steeply sloping roof to shed snow, gabled dormers for more living space on the top floor.
This has a tin roof, but many roofs are shingles made from magnificent Alerce trees. The government banned the export of Alerce wood in 1976. It is a slow growing tree, the fine grained wood is in demand. I believe the tall tree towering over the roof is a Monkey Puzzle, scientific name Araucaria araucana, an ancient evergreen, the national tree of Chile and one of the unique differences the early Germans came to recognize and love as their own South American identify.
The Orsorno Volcano, somehow reminiscent of the Alps and very different. Here a half moon, high above and shining brightly on a summer evening, February 2016. These are some of the touches European travelers name “Chilean Swiss.”
Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Glacial meltwater from Lake Todos los Santos (All Saints Lake) forms Petrohué River and, where the river flows over lava from the Orsorno Volcano, Petrohué Falls. This set of photographs features the emerald color the river originating from glacial minerals.
Click any photograph for a larger view.
A strangeness of these photographs is this is the middle of February, Chilean summertime.
Force of Nature
Another strangeness, not readily apparent, is the effect of the Coriolis force. Here in the Northern Hemisphere water (any moving mass, really) moving perpendicular to the rotating surface of the earth (a property of water is the surface follows the contour of the solid surface over which it flows) will tend to flow in a clockwise direction. Crossing the equator, in the Southern Hemisphere the tendency reverses, tending to flow to the left, counter-clockwise. With some imagination the effect of the Coriolis force can be seen in the following photograph.
Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Petrohué Waterfalls (pronounced petro-WEH) is within Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park of Chile. For me, this view was one of the draws of our entire trip, that stratovolcano and its craggy children in the distance the same type as Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that wiped Pompeii off the map in 79 AD. Described by Pliny, the eruption type is named even today “plinian,” the most destructive and violent of all volcanic eruptions.
It was an irrational happiness I felt walking this place, I still smile to myself remembering it.
Click photograph for a larger view.
The mastery of water over volcanic rock deposited by ancient eruptions of the Orsorno Volcano.
Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 
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