Description of the attraction
Conillo National Park is located in the Araucania region, 148 km northeast of the regional capital Temuco. The park, with a total area of 60,833 hectares, was formed in 1987 by the confluence of Los Paraguas National Park, Coniglio Forest Reserve and the Laguna Verde sector. It is also part of the Araucaria Biosphere Reserve.
The beauty of the park is in its high-mountainous lakes and ponds, green forests, high-mountain snow-covered ridges, an active volcano, all this allowed the park to become one of the most visited in the country. The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC has named the park one of the last "dinosaur hideouts" due to its prehistoric landscape.
One of the most popular tourist attractions is climbing the extinct volcano Sierra Nevada (2554 m), where you can see the bed of the Blanco River, Lake Coniglio and the majestic volcano Llaima. This landscape does not leave indifferent any tourist.
Volcano Llaima (3125 m) with two craters is one of the busiest in South America. Its influence on the park's morphology, local flora and fauna is impressive. For 400 years after the arrival of Europeans on the continent, more than 70 historical eruptions have occurred here. The last two occurred in January 2008 and April 2009, increasing the height of the volcano by 70 meters.
The existing lakes and rivers owe their origin to the continuous activity of the volcano. After the lava has passed, slag plugs impede the free flow of rivers, forming the existing system of lakes. Thus, Lake Coniglio (780 hectares), underground natural drainage and the lagoons of Captrin (5 hectares), Verde (140 hectares) and Arcoiris (0.5 hectares) were formed, which are included in the watershed of the second largest river in Chile - the Bio-Bio River and Imperial river.
The name of Lake Conillo comes from "Ko-nqilliu", which in the Mapuche language means "pine nuts in the water". And this is really so: mixed evergreen forests rise around the lake - the Chilean araucaria, resembling an umbrella in its appearance, several varieties of beech and oak, hazel, mountain cypress. These forests are inaccessible, so some of the trees are several centuries old. Also, this area is rich in predatory mammals: there are puma, fox, weasel, wild cat, as well as birds - ducks, Andean condor, eagles and pigeons.
The climate in the park is warm and temperate, with areas of permafrost in the highlands. The average temperature does not exceed + 15 ° C in the warm season, and + 6 ° C in the coldest months - from June to July.
The National Forestry Corporation CONAF has made great efforts to preserve and protect the region, which has made the Conillo National Park a model for the protection of the natural environment. Visitors to the park can not only observe the life of local fauna and enjoy the beautiful surroundings, but also study biology, zoology, botany through free educational programs.
