Chilean Sierra Nevada: Araucaria on the slope

I remember that when traveling through New Zealand, immersion in the beauty of the country took place very gradually: at first the places were simpler, then, as you moved south, the impressions became steeper and more intense. In Chile, everything turned out to be completely different: a sharp "dive into the picturesque" was made almost immediately, and then this "scuba diving" lasted the whole trip until returning to Santiago.

On the first day, we went on a trek through Conguillio National Park, which, it seems, was remembered by everyone as the best of the hiking trails traveled during the trip. The trail, marked on the maps as sendero Sierra Nevada, rises up the hill, now and then revealing views of the blue lake and the green valley, now the snow-capped peaks, then delving into the forest thickets.

This place is not as advertised as some well-known trails in the south of Chile and Argentina, so there is no pilgrimage of tourists there. Honestly, even on the English-speaking Internet, information about Sierra Nevada (not to be confused with the ridge of the same name in California!) Is undeservedly small.

Ascent along the trail is not physically difficult at all, the slope is gentle, and along the way something interesting is encountered.

Of course, araucaria:

The adjacent slope is overgrown with them:

Unidentified Berries:

Google gives out something similar with the name ancestral murtilla (it seems to be Chilean endemic), but I won’t give a peso for accuracy.

Picturesque Valley:

Kongulo Lake from different angles:

Araucaria from a distance look like giant mushrooms:

The path crosses a pair of snowfields along the way:

The track leads to the Mirador Sierra Nevada and ends there. Mirador is a "viewing platform" in Spanish, and very soon this word will come into use with our group as a native. Let's shout: "Oh, there is a beautiful mirador, let's stop!"

Having descended the same path back, we decided that we would manage to visit several more picturesque points of the Congulo park.

The first of them is Lake Lago Arcoiris:

Everywhere volcanic sand to the horizon:

Another laguna Verde is a green lagoon (just in case, I will say that every fifth lagoon there is verde). In fact, in the evening sun she was no longer verde, so I had to take pictures from the unpopular shore: