Araucanía Region, Chile: natural beauty – plenty.

Sollipulli volcano – conquered. So what else is interesting around these parts (in the Araucanía Region)?

First, much of the local population is made up of indigenous South Americans – the Mapuche. And you can tell this simply by walking along the bank of a lake here. Different toponomies are also curiously interesting; for example, we passed a road sign with Das Dorf on it: clearly there are plenty of Germans here too…

But for me the main things here are the natural beauty and the meditative views. For example, there’s the Villarrica volcano (named the same as both the lake and town it towers over)…

Some three kilometers high, the volcano’s a beaut – very symmetrical and photogenic. It erupts rather frequently, and at night you can often see traces of red molten lava in the crater. Alas, we didn’t get to see such nocturnal delights; we had to settle for gray winter scenes:

Plenty of walking routes up and around the volcano (for those who have time) ->

…We didn’t, but no bother – we’d had our fill of trekking the previous day. We simply concentrated on the marvelous views all around ->

These views must be so much better under a blue sky, but we weren’t complaining…

A particularly pretty natural beauty here – the 90-meter-high “El Leon” waterfall:

El Leon? That’ll be the Lion, right? Actually – no, according to the locals; it means Puma :%).

There’s a small fee to see the waterfall. But it’s worth it!

Hot water pools. But – of course: wherever there are volcanoes there are hot springs. Another unexpected actually: these aren’t naturally heated thermal springs; they’re heated ~industrially:

One other thing I must tell you about that really impressed me was the place we stayed at – the hotel and tourist center Los Pioneros – >

Good décor, nicely furnished, well-maintained, and the chef’s a gourmet-genius! Highly recommended!

Again – I imagine it’s even nicer paradise in summer…

Log fire in the lobby – perfect for drying out clothes after a walk ->

The rooms are modest, but considering the place really is out in the sticks – not bad at all.

Here’s the route we took this weekend:

A while later we were back at the airport and into a plane when the heavens opened – mercifully no sooner ->

And off we popped to Santiago. Santiago is a large capital – measuring some 30x40km, and home to more than six million souls (which is around a third of the whole population of the country!) ->

And that’s all for now folks. Back soon!…

The rest of the photos from Chile are here.