06/07/08-01-20: Rainy days

Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been very good for the past few days and has slowed us down a bit. We couldn't do some of the planned hikes. Today it's pouring rain and tomorrow won't be any better. But it's also a good opportunity to relax. Starting from Friday, it's going to be sunny again with a temperature of 25 degrees. Right now, we are staying in a beautiful lodge with a great restaurant near Pucón. The lodge has its own hot spring. Hot springs are everywhere in this area. Thanks to the volcanoes.

Before that, we spent one night in Pucón and stayed at the 'Gran Hotel Pucón'. The hotel is in a great location right by Lake Villarrica with a black volcanic ash beach.

From the hotel, you also have a clear view of the active Villarrica volcano, unless the weather with its low clouds prevents it. We didn't see Villarrica. You can tell that the hotel must have been the first one in town at some point. Now it has a certain post-communist charm. It was built in the early 1930s and has only undergone one renovation to this day, which must have been 40 years ago.

In the past few days, we visited some waterfalls and lagoons. We were in the Puyehue National Park, a wet forest with extraordinary trees and plants. Everything is truly amazingly beautiful, and the national parks are in great condition. Sometimes we're lucky and spot native bird species that we don't know from Germany.

From here, we continued to the extinct Antillanca volcano with a ski center.

One of the highlights are the chance encounters with Chileans that we meet in small cafes. We have never encountered such consistently friendly and polite people as in Chile.