In Puerto Montt you invariably wake to find a picture-postcard scene facing you through the window, because here beauty is everywhere and in every direction.

If the visitor chooses to explore by sea, the volcanoes and snowy peaks of the mainland will keep him furiously snapping his camera and forgetting to breathe in the face of such magnificent scenery.

The same thing will happen if his destination is the picturesque palafitos, those houses on wooden stilts at the seashore, caressed by the waves and the gentle murmur of the foamy breakers.

The whole of this area, as a matter of fact, seems to have been specially designed to wash away people's negative moods, filling them with vitality, perhaps because the hugeness of the landscape is able to hide pessimistic feelings under its sheets of water, or perhaps due to the telluric forces emanating from its impressive landscape.

Puerto Montt was founded on February 12, 1853, by Vicente Perez Rosales, accompanied by a group of German settlers - those courageous and hardy men and women who settled on the apparently inhospitable land of the south of Chile.

Thanks to the drive of the pioneers, the city went through a spell of dizzying growth. In 1912, with the arrival of the railway, it became a nerve center for those who were traveling to the island of Chiloe and the Straits of Magellan. Development came accompanied by the steel track and the whistling of locomotives.

Over the years, the city went on growing and becoming more prosperous. However, nature dealt it a nasty blow in 1960, when an earthquake almost totally destroyed it; that event rekindled the pioneering spirit of the old settlers, and it was rebuilt thanks to the drive and courage of its population.

So, Puerto Montt rose again from the ashes and - in 1979 - became the capital of the 10th Region, the Lake Region. Puerto Montt is now a city of 110,000 inhabitants whose main industry is salmon fish farming, a constantly growing activity since 1985.

The city is changing, growing and stretching its boundaries. Progress is changing its traditional face; however, what will never change is the enterprising spirit of its people and the overwhelming beauty of its natural surroundings.