Cucao and Huillinco are two lakes in central

Chiloé Island Chiloé Island (, , ), also known as Greater Island of Chiloé (''Isla Grande de Chiloé''), is the largest island of the Chiloé Archipelago off the west coast of Chile, in the Pacific Ocean. The island is located in southern Chile, in the Los L ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

, linked by a strait forming one hydrologic lake. The two lakes are oriented in west-east fashion cutting off the

Chilean Coast Range The Chilean Coastal Range () is a mountain range that runs from north to south along the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America parallel to the Andes, Andean Mountains, extending from Morro de Arica in the north to Taitao Peninsula, where ...

in Chiloé Island into two ranges; Piuchén to north and Pirulil to the south. The outlet of the lakes, Desaguadero or Cucao River lies at the western end of Cucao Lake, and flows into the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

. To the west Cucao is separated from the open ocean by an ancient dune field and pastures which are crossed by Desaguadero River. The bottom of both lakes is saline.Villalobos, L., Parra, O., Grandjean, M., Jaque, E., Woelfl, S., Campos, H. (2003)
A study of the river basins and limnology of five humic lakes on Chiloé Island
''

Revista Chilena de Historia Natural The ''Revista Chilena de Historia Natural'' is a bilingual open access scientific journal published by the Sociedad de Biología de Chile covering research in many areas of biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organis ...

'', 76 (4), 563–590.

References

Lakes of Chiloé Archipelago Lakes of Chile {{LosLagos-geo-stub