{"id":16981,"date":"2018-04-17T15:18:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T13:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=16981"},"modified":"2025-01-20T20:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T19:23:59","slug":"monkey-puzzle-safari-in-chile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=16981","title":{"rendered":"Monkey Puzzle Safari in Chile"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In December 2004, I went to a remote sensing conference in Concepcion in Chile in my other life as an ocean wave climatologist!<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I took some holiday to experience some of the native edibles. One of the main objectives was to experience the ancient old growth Monkey Puzzle forest (Araucaria araucana<\/em>) and I hoped also to see nuts (pi\u00f1ones) for sale on Mapuche (the indigenous people) markets. It was probably the wrong time of the year (spring) and I didn’t see any nuts. However, after a failed attempt to get up into the main part of the Conguill\u00edo National Park due to late laying snow, I did a long hike into the Huerquehue National Park where I walked amongst the old growth monkey puzzle trees that are sometimes known as Umbrella or Toilet Brush trees as old trees (they can reach 1,000 years old!) only have a few branches at the top. Nowadays, it is an endangered species and logging is no longer allowed. It is also the national tree of Chile. A significant part of the diet of the native Pehuenche people (one of the Mapuche peoples) were the nutritious nuts and their name means simply people of the monkey puzzle seeds (Pewen).
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