5 Best Sights in The Southern Coast, Chile

Just 64 km (40 miles) south of Coyhaique, this national park is home to one of the most beautiful mountain chains in the region, crowned majestically by the rugged Cerro Castillo. Glacier runoff fills the lakes below the mountain, and the reserve is also home to several species of deer, puma, and guanaco. Cerro Castillo could be called one of the best hikes in Patagonia, but it gets only a tiny percent of visitors compared with its more popular counterpart to the south, Torres del Paine. One excellent hiking route begins at Las Horquetas Grandes, 8 km (5 miles) south of the park entrance. From there, go along La Lima River until Laguna Cerro Castillo, where you can begin your walk around the peak, and then head toward the nearby village of Villa Cerro Castillo. There is bus service from Coyhaique, but it's better to come here in your own rented vehicle. It's also preferable to hike with a guide, as trails are not always clearly marked. Senderos Patagonia (aysensenderospatagonia.com, 9/6224–4725) offers several options for both day hikes and multiday expeditions, as well as horseback rides through the park. 

Funded and organized by the late American conservationist Douglas Tompkins, this park covers 402,392 hectares (994,331 acres) and shelters the largest—and one of the few remaining—intact alerce forests in the world. Alerces, the world's second-longest-living tree species at up to 4,000 years, are often compared to the equally giant California redwood. Tompkins, who founded the clothing companies ESPRIT and The North Face, died in a kayaking accident in December 2015, and was posthumously lauded as an environmental hero in Chile and the world over. Pumalín Park represents the biggest parcel of altogether 1 million acres of land officially donated to Chile in March 2017 by Conservation Land Trust, the foundation set up to manage Tompkins's park projects in South America. Thanks in part to lands bought up and preserved by Tompkins, Pumalín became a full-fledged national park in April 2019. The Pan-American Highway, which trundles all the way north to Alaska, is interrupted at Pumalín, though the government plans to expand the highway through it. Meanwhile, there's a well-maintained road stretching 60 km (37 miles) from Chaitén to the northern entrance of the park at Caleta Gonzalo.

This park encompasses some of the most pristine landscape in the region, if not the world. There are a dozen trails that wind past lakes and waterfalls. Stay in excellent wooden cabins or at one of the 17 campsites, or put up your tent on one of the local farms scattered across the area that welcome travelers. After the Chaitén Volcano eruption here in 2008, the main entrance to the park was moved to El Amarillo, some 30 km (18 miles) south of Chaitén. But one can still arrive via the more developed Caleta Gonzalo entrance to the north, where a ferry from Hornopirén can drop you off and where the cabins and a park restaurant are located.

The rugged 154,000-hectare (380,000-acre) Parque Nacional Queulat begins to rise and roll to either side of the Carretera Austral some 20 km (12 miles) south of Puyuhuapi. The rivers and streams crisscross dense virgin forests. At the higher altitudes, brilliant blue glaciers can be found in the valleys between snowcapped peaks. If you're lucky, you'll spot a pudú, one of the diminutive deer that make their home in the forest. Less than 1 km (about a half mile) off the east side of the Carretera Austral, you are treated to a close-up view of the hanging glacier, Ventisquero Colgante, which slides a sheet of ice between a pair of gentle rock faces. Several waterfalls cascade down the cliffs to either side of the glacier's foot. There is an easy 15-minute walk leading to one side of the lake below the glacier, which is not visible from the overlook. A short drive farther south, where the Carretera Austral makes sharp switchback turns as it climbs higher, a small sign indicates the trailhead for the Salto Padre García. There is no parking area, but you can leave your car on the shoulder. This short hike through dense forest is worth attempting for a close-up view of this waterfall of striking proportions. There are three CONAF stations (the national forestry service), and an informative Environmental Information Center at the parking lot for the Ventisquero Colgante overlook and the southern and northern entrances to the park.

Nearly all of the 1,742,000-hectare (3,832,400-acre) Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael is inaccessible fields of ice, and only a handful of the people have ever set foot on land. Most travel by boat from Puerto Chacabuco or Puerto Montt through the maze of fjords along the coast to the expansive San Rafael Lagoon. Floating on the surface of the brilliant blue water are scores of icebergs that rock from side to side as boats pass. Most surprising is the variety of forms and colors in each iceberg, including a shimmering, translucent cobalt blue. The massive Ventisquero San Rafael glacier measures 4 km (3 miles) from end to end but is receding about 182 meters (600 feet) a year. Paint on a bordering mountain marks the location of the glacier in past years. It's a noisy beast, roaring like thunder as the sheets of ice shift. If you're lucky, you can see huge pieces of ice calve off, causing violent waves that should make you glad your boat is at a safe distance.

Wildlife lovers can glimpse black-browed albatross and elegant black-necked swans here, as well as sea lions, dolphins, elephant seals, and chungungos—the Chilean version of the sea otter.

In 2019, this formerly private park became a national park and, moreover, merged territory with the Jeinimeni National Reserve (to the north) and the Tamango National Reserve (to the south) to form a much larger conservation preserve encompassing 304,527 hectares (752,503 acres). It was a major achievement for Kris Tompkins McDivitt, a former CEO of outdoor clothing company Patagonia and wife of the late nature philanthropist Doug Tompkins. With a landscape reminiscent of the American Southwest, this park includes semiarid steppe, temperate beech forests, grasslands, wetlands, and high mountains. The park includes unique fauna such as huemul, an endangered Chilean deer species; pumas; the hairy armadillo; and numerous birds species such as the Andean condor and pygmy owl. Guanacos especially abound here. Like other parks created by the Tompkins clan in the region, the trails and infrastructure here have set not just a national standard but a global one. Don't miss the excellent Patagonia Park Museum, which, through interactive exhibits, tells the natural and cultural history of the Chacabuco Valley, as well as the importance of national parks in ecological recovery.