Altos de Cantillana, just 45 minutes from Santiago city centre, is one of the most interesting private natural parks in Chile. This is primarily because the vegetation and animals are unique and native to this area. It represents the natural environment that existed in the entire central region during the era of the last glaciations, but which became extinct afterwards.
Given its altitude and geographic conditions, this chunk of the coastal mountain range maintains special conditions and important species such as the Santiago oak tree, the matuasto reptile and the avellanita tree.
It is perfect for specialised tourism, particularly if you want to observe nature, experience the daily life of the arrieros (muleteers) or enjoy a beautiful sense of solitude just a few kilometres from Santiago.
El Fundo Los Hornos de Aculeo, owns a large part of these hills and one of the main entrance ways. In this way, it is committed to a project to safeguard nature’s values placing utmost importance on everything unspoilt and wild. In order to do this it is trying to gain respect as an area of private property and organise visits for interested parties, in a rational and ecological manner.
One of the elements that make this park so interesting and unique is the fact that you need to undertake a 7 hour horseback ride up steep mountainside, in order to access the plateau. The vastness of these mountains however, protects them from the pressures wielded by the large neighbouring urban centres and from people who do not realise that it is private property.
The bottom part of the park, beside the Aculeo lagoon, displays rolling hills covered in sclerophyll vegetation, exactly the way it would have been when the Spaniards arrived in the valley.
Your family or group of friends can enjoy the best type of entertainment here; horseback riding or spending a day in the country, trekking, long or short guided horseback journeys or you can even visit a beautiful forest, a survivor of another era, which has sign posted trails offering a pleasant, flat walk.
The estate does not provide tables, swimming pools or any other commodities, but rather, the opportunity of feeling transported to another era, to a place where nature expresses herself in all her grandeur.
Visiting the park helps us to maintain and look after a place that has captured the interest of different organizations, like the United Nations and the Chilean Government, who are concerned about protecting the park from the advancement of unrestricted development.
Places to visit near Santiago