Park Oncol (Parque Oncol) description and photos - Chile: Valdivia (Topic)

Parque Oncol description and photos - Chile: Valdivia. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Parque Oncol.

Photo and description

Onkol Park is a forest reserve, established in 1989. It is located 32 kilometers northwest of the city of Valdivia, in the de Los Rios region of Chile. This is a place of amazing beauty, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rio Cruces nature reserve, and just 5 km from the coast.

This park, with an area of 754 hectares, is mostly located on the hill of the same name. Oncol Hill is the highest point (715 m above sea level) in the Cordillera de la Costa in the province of Valdivia, which is of great importance since the high places of the Cordillera de la Costa were not affected by glaciation and the forests remained here untouched when the Central Valley and the Andes mountains were covered with ice.

A specialty of Oncol Park is its lush Valdivian forest, preserved in its original form - a tropical rainforest in a temperate climatic zone. A similar forest can still be seen in New Zealand, but there are none in the Northern Hemisphere.

The forest grows a wide variety of evergreen cypress, 28 species of ferns and mosses, 7 species of orchids, cinnamon and podocarpus, and from the fauna you can see Darwin's frog, black woodpecker and a variety of endemic amphibians.

On the southern side of Oncol Hill is the Carlos Anwandter Nature Reserve.

The park has camping and picnic areas. In addition, there are four treetop observation decks, two of which are on the route with panoramic views of Valdivia, the wetlands and the seaside. From here you can see eleven volcanoes, including the Llaima volcano (3215 m), the Osorno volcano (2652 m) and the Cerro Tronador volcano (3554 m), which is located on the border of Chile and Argentina.

Walking along the routes are conducted by guides as part of education tourists. The park has a specially designed trail that leads to the coast in Pichiquin, a sector with no vehicle access, which can still only be reached by sea. At this junction of the ocean and pristine forests that have remained untouched for thousands of years, dolphins and blue whales can be seen on the shore as they migrate, and penguins, otters and cormorants can be seen nesting on the coastal slopes.

The park is owned by Forestal Valdivia and " Celulosa Arauco y Constituci & oacute; n ",

Topic: Park Oncol (Parque Oncol) description and photos - Chile: Valdivia.