Qualla: La Campana National Park https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: La Campana National Park https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park La Campana National Park: Introduction https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park/ Photo credit LBM1948, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 16 August 1834, a young naturalist set out before dawn to climb a mountain in the coastal hills of central Chile. Charles Darwin was twenty-five, ashore from HMS Beagle, and he would later call the day among the most memorable of the entire voyage. From the summit of Cerro La Campana he looked out over the whole sweep of country, the Andes to the east, the Pacific to the west, and wrote of feeling as though he could see all of Chile at once. On the way up he noticed the palms, strange and massive, and described how the local people drew from them a sap that tasted like honey. Nearly two centuries later that mountain and those palms are protected together inside La Campana National Park.

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Image: LBM1948 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/66jk-la-campana-national-park-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full La Campana National Park: Darwin's Mountain https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park/ Photo credit P R, CC BY 2.0. The Beagle had reached Valparaíso in July 1834, and Darwin used the stop to range inland. In mid-August he rode out to the Hacienda de San Isidro at the foot of the mountain, and on the morning of the sixteenth, with a guide and fresh horses, he made the ascent of Cerro La Campan...

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Image: P R | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/66jk-la-campana-national-park-darwins-mountain.mp3 0:06 2 full La Campana National Park: The Honey Palm https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park/ Photo credit Scott Zona from Miami, Florida, USA, CC BY 2.0. The tree Darwin admired was Jubaea chilensis, the Chilean wine palm, and it is a botanical marvel. It carries the thickest trunk of any palm on Earth, a smooth gray column that can reach one and a half to two meters across and rise some eighteen to twenty-five meters, and it is a...

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Image: Scott Zona from Miami, Florida, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/66jk-la-campana-national-park-the-honey-palm.mp3 0:06 3 full La Campana National Park: The Ocoa Forest https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park/ Photo credit Kenov66, CC BY-SA 4.0. The heart of the palm story lies in the park's Ocoa Valley, where the Palmar de Ocoa holds the largest concentration of Chilean wine palms left in the world. La Campana spreads across roughly eighty square kilometers of the Chilean matorral, the Mediterranean-climate scrubland th...

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Image: Kenov66 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/66jk-la-campana-national-park-the-ocoa-forest.mp3 0:06 4 full La Campana National Park: A Window Into Old Chile https://qualla.com/la-campana-national-park/ Photo credit Burmesedays, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes La Campana matter is that it preserves a version of central Chile that has nearly vanished everywhere else. The vineyards, suburbs, and farms of the densely settled coast have erased most of the original matorral and almost all of the old palm forests. Here, behind the...

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Image: Burmesedays | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/k/la-campana-national-park-wp/66jk-la-campana-national-park-a-window-into-old-chile.mp3 0:06 5 full