The making of shingles: Alerce

I've already done 2 posts about the shingled buildings on Chiloe Island and in Chile's Southern Patagonia, so here's some pictures of the trees that the shingles were traditionally made from.  It's called Alerce.

These old trees can be 4000 years old,  and they aren't so renewable. The Alerce trees are now protected, it's illegal to harvest them.  New shingled homes are made with cypress or fabricated shingles.

The old Alerce singles are said to be virtually indestructible,  so there's still lots of buildings with those to be seen.

On the Alerce walk in Pumalin National Park they had constructed parts of the walk using fallen Alerce trees,  sometimes you just walked on the big old tree that they had carved tred into.