Ninety seconds on Museo Histórico de Puerto Montt Juan Pablo II
Free, and a few steps from the bus terminal, so it fits the hour before a bus south. Since its reopening it starts with Monte Verde, a settlement the city dates to 14,500 years ago.
Monte Verde comes first, in a room made with the foundation behind the archaeological site and with Tom Dillehay, the archaeologist who began excavating there in the late seventies. Ten-odd rooms and several hundred objects follow the city on from there. The canoe peoples of the Reloncaví are represented by the remains of dalcas, plank boats built to be taken apart. The earlier layout ran through Chilote carved saints, German colonisation, the great earthquake of 1960 and a room on the papal visit with the chair the pope used; how much of that survived the latest renovation is not documented. On summer opening weekends, tourism students from a local college have led the tours.
Explore the rest of Puerto Montt
Two volcanoes fill the view across Lago Llanquihue from its southern shore, Osorno to the northeast and Calbuco to the east. German…
Close to forty thousand hectares of temperate rainforest east of the city, protecting alerce stands in which the oldest trees approach…
A shingled Lutheran church on the lakefront avenue, plain inside with a boarded ceiling and a gallery, kept by descendants of the colonists…