Puerto Montt, Chile: Gateway to Patagonia and the Lake District

The Reloncaví Estuary and the Cochamo Valley, about two hours east of Puerto Montt by road, are accessible half-day excursions with genuinely dramatic scenery. The Cochamo Valley is sometimes called the Yosemite of South America: granite walls rising 1,000 meters from the valley floor, with the Rio Cochamo running between them through Valdivian temperate rainforest. The drive through Ensenada on the south shore of Lake Llanquihue, with views to Osorno Volcano and Calbuco Volcano across the lake, is one of the better road views in southern Chile.

Chiloé Island, accessible by a thirty-minute ferry from Pargua (about sixty kilometers from Puerto Montt), is one of the most culturally distinct corners of Chile. The island was isolated from mainland Chile for long periods by its weather and geography, developing its own distinctive wooden church architecture (there are sixteen UNESCO-listed wooden churches on the island, built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries), its own mythology (the Trauco, the Chilote witch, the ghost ship Caleuche), and its own cuisine centered on the curanto — a traditional dish of shellfish, pork, chicken, potatoes, and vegetables cooked under hot stones in a hole in the ground. A full Chiloé day trip from Puerto Montt takes eight to ten hours.

Puerto Montt's Angelmó fish market, on the waterfront west of the city center, is one of the largest and most varied seafood markets in Chile. The stalls sell live centolla (king crab), sea urchins, clams, mussels, and the full range of Chilean cold-water shellfish; the corrugated-iron restaurants upstairs cook them to order. The market is at its most active in the morning. The adjacent craft market sells Chilote knitted goods, wood carvings, and baskets.

The city's volcanic setting becomes viscerally real when Calbuco Volcano is visible to the southeast — an ice-capped cone that last erupted in 2015. Clear-day views from the Costanera waterfront take in both Calbuco and Osorno, the latter a near-perfect 2,652-meter cone that has been called the Fuji of South America.