The Lake District & Araucanía

This was the Mapuche heartland. Spanish conquistadors founded Valdivia in 1552 and a string of towns south of the Biobío, but a great uprising after the battle of Curalaba in 1598 destroyed them, and for more than two centuries the Mapuche held the land between the Biobío and the Toltén, negotiating with the Spanish crown at formal parliaments. Valdivia was refounded in 1645 as a fortified outpost, guarded by forts at Corral, Niebla and Mancera, and Chiloé remained a Spanish stronghold until 1826, the last part of Chile to fall to the republic.

In the mid-19th century the Chilean state moved south. From the 1840s it recruited German settlers, who cleared forest around Valdivia, Osorno and Lake Llanquihue and founded Puerto Montt in 1853. Between 1861 and 1883 the army occupied the Araucanía in the campaign known in Chile as the Pacification of the Araucanía; Mapuche communities were confined to reserves, and Temuco, founded as a fort in 1881, grew into the regional capital.

On 22 May 1960 the Valdivia earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded, struck the region, followed by a tsunami that swept the coast and Chiloé. The land question has never been settled: Mapuche organisations continue to claim ancestral territory, while the state, farmers and forestry companies defend their titles. Los Ríos became a separate region in 2007.

La Araucanía has the highest Mapuche share of any Chilean region, and Mapuche culture is visible in daily life: Mapudungun place names, the silver jewellery of women's festive dress, woven textiles, the machi, or healer, and ceremonies such as the nguillatun and We Tripantu, the new year at the June solstice. Palín, a stick-and-ball game, is still played.

The lake country has a different flavour. German settlement left shingled wooden houses, Lutheran churches, beer and cakes, as well as family names still common in Osorno, Frutillar and Puerto Varas. Frutillar holds a classical music festival each summer in its lakeside Teatro del Lago.

Chiloé has its own identity, with a Catholic tradition shaped by Jesuit and Franciscan missions, a carpentry culture of shingles and boats, and a mythology of beings such as the Trauco, the sea spirit Pincoya and the ghost ship Caleuche. The minga, a work party of neighbours repaid with food and drink, survives most famously in the tiradura de casas, when a house is dragged or floated to a new site.

About 2.3 million people live across the three regions. Temuco, with around 300,000 people, is the largest city and the commercial centre of the Araucanía; Puerto Montt, of similar size, is the port and service hub for Chiloé and Patagonia; Valdivia, Osorno and Villarrica follow, and Castro is the main town on Chiloé.

Farming, cattle and dairy dominate around Osorno and the central plain, and forestry plantations cover much of the Araucanía. The inland sea around Puerto Montt and Chiloé holds much of Chile's salmon farming, which made Chile one of the world's leading producers of farmed salmon but has faced disease outbreaks and harmful algal blooms. Tourism is concentrated in Pucón and Puerto Varas, and the Austral University in Valdivia gives that city a student population.

Life follows the weather: winters are long, grey and wet, and summer is when everyone is outdoors.

The south eats seafood, potatoes and German baking. Chiloé is the home of curanto, shellfish, meat, sausage and potato dumplings cooked in a pit over hot stones under nalca leaves, and of milcao, a bread of grated and mashed potato. The island grows hundreds of native potato varieties. Puerto Montt's Angelmó market sells fresh fish and shellfish.

Mapuche cooking contributes merkén, a smoked chilli and coriander seed spice, and piñones, the seeds of the araucaria, boiled or roasted and long the staple of the Pehuenche people of the Andes. Catutos, a dough of crushed boiled wheat, are a traditional Mapuche food.

German settlers brought kuchen, fruit tarts made with raspberries or murtilla, a native berry, now sold in cafés in every lake town. Valdivia has a brewing tradition dating to the 19th century and is home to the Kunstmann brewery, and Osorno is known for beef and dairy. Chicha de manzana, a cider, is the old countryside drink.

In La Araucanía, Pucón sits on Lake Villarrica beneath the Villarrica volcano, around 2,850 metres, climbed in a long guided day to its crater; around it are Huerquehue National Park with its lakes and araucarias, hot springs, and rivers for rafting. To the north, Conguillío National Park has araucaria forests, lava fields and lakes under the Llaima volcano, and Temuco has its market and the regional museum.

In Los Ríos, Valdivia spreads along the Calle-Calle river, with its riverside fish market, the Austral University's botanic garden, and boat trips to the 17th-century forts at Niebla, Corral and Mancera Island. Inland, the lakes around Panguipulli and the Huilo-Huilo reserve are forested and quiet.

In Los Lagos, Puerto Varas and Frutillar face Lake Llanquihue and the Osorno volcano. Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park, founded in 1926 as Chile's first, has the Petrohué falls and Lake Todos los Santos, and Puyehue National Park and the Alerce Andino park protect temperate rainforest. South of Puerto Montt the Carretera Austral begins, through Hornopirén, Chaitén, Pumalín Park and the white-water town of Futaleufú.

Chiloé's attractions are its wooden churches, sixteen of them a UNESCO World Heritage Site, including those of Castro, Achao and Dalcahue, Castro's stilt houses on the water, the penguin islets at Puñihuil and Chiloé National Park on the Pacific coast.