Journey back through emerald waters: like the Jesuit explorers before them, this author and his companion are overwhelmed by the magical, forbidding environs of Chile's Lake Todos los Santos.

• Author: Stuparich, Ricardo Carrasco

In 1670, a group of Jesuit missionaries set out from the rain-drenched city of Castro in southern Chile in search of the Ciudad de los Cesares (City of the Cesars) and the most direct route to points east and north. Purportedly, the City of the Cesars was a remote place of great mineral riches founded by followers of Francisco de Cesar, a member of navigator Sebastian Cabot's Rio de la Plata expedition of 1526. The Jesuits believed that among such settlers--a ragtag group of conquistadors' descendants, European refugees, and natives--there would be much work for them to do. Where there was gold, the Jesuits surmised, there were bound to be lost souls. The intrepid group hiked through dense temperate rain forests and sailed in sturdy piraguas made by their native guides, but the magical City of the Cesars proved elusive. What the Jesuits did find, though, was an enormous blue-green glacial lake that they later named Todos los Santos (All Saints). Over three centuries later, a friend and I traveled the Jesuits' route, in kayaks, to explore the rare, fabled color of the lake's waters, its surrounding virgin evergreen forest, and volcanic origin.

We left from Petrohue, a small port settlement on the western shore of the lake that was established by early pioneers and is today a commercial center for the region's dairy farmers. Starting out, we knew little of the region's splendors and couldn't imagine its true vastness. Located inside the 626,000-acre Vicente Perez Rosales National Park, the first national park established in Chile, in 1926, Todos los Santos is part of a chain of lakes linked by mountain passes between Chile and the Argentine pampas. Both volcanic and glacial, it is twenty-two miles wide from Petrohue to Peulla, the easternmost point, and our destination.

Leaving the port behind, we follow along the shoreline, gradually accustoming ourselves to the weight and distribution of our equipment in the kayaks. Then, slowly, the water begins to take on a greenish tinge. We find ourselves paddling through scenery that could have been painted by Gauguin--reddish sky, green-black mountains, and emerald water. We stop at several points to take in the scene before us, neither of us bothered by our slowing pace.

At dusk, near the lagoon at Cayutue, we set up our tent on a white-sand beach strewn with the trunks of many beeches, the most typical local tree. Eroded by the water and incessant wind, they have acquired a delicate velvety texture...