Chile Guide
The Lake District
Valdivia
Apart from a very minor private road from Puerto Fuy round the far side of Volcán Choshuenco, the only way south from the Siete Lagos is to head back to the Panamericana, via Panguipulli (60km) or Riñihue (47km). Both routes end up at Los Lagos, a town that used to be an important river port, but these days is little more than a petrol station with history. From here the Panamericana stretches off into the distance, though a major road (known simply as "the road to Valdivia") shoots west to VALDIVIA and the coast, well worth the diversion for a quick blast of sea air.
Valdivia is a vibrant, cosmopolitan mixture of the colonial and the contemporary, with concrete apartment buildings and weathered mansions. In some intangible way it still feels like a colonial city even though many of its old buildings are gone – lost to earthquakes, fires and floods throughout the last century. The 1960 earthquake, the largest in recent memory, triggered a massive tidal wave that swamped all Chile's coast from here down to the island of Chiloé and altered the courses of numerous rivers.
Today Valdivia is focused on water. The centre of town is a little soulless, difficult to tell apart from many others in Chile, but it's by the river that you'll find the city's heart, bustling with a lively market, the Mercado Fluvial. Tours leave from the quay near the market for the seventeenth-century Spanish coastal forts of Niebla and Corral. Across the river is the island of Teja, a place of quiet and calm, where you can find Valdivia's excellent Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele.
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