Saturday morning we drove around the lake to Villarrica for a morning on the highly commercialized, black sand beach along the front of the town and in view of the snow-capped volcano. By the afternoon, the beach would be packed with sunbathers and umbrellas, and so we opted to arrive early, before many of the […]

We woke at 6am to drive 2.5 hours north of Pucon to Parque Conguillo, a notable national park in Chile. The park has an active volcano as the centerpiece, and it has green and blue lakes, black lava flows, while snowcapped peaks streaming waterfalls, and hiking trails passing through old forests with the unique Araucaria […]

We drove 45 minute to a national park on the eastern side of Pucon, arriving about the time it opened at 8:30am. We decided to hike the Los Lagos trail to see two waterfalls, Nido de Aguilas and Salto Trufulco. It was a pleasant hike. The trail took us along a clear lake, between some […]

We tested out our new travel school system: schooling in the morning and hiking in the afternoon. We completed our homeschool assignments by about 11am, ate lunch, and then drove into the national park for a five mile hike to a viewpoint of the volcano. It was a wonderful afternoon, including chilly air, an easy […]

It’s no secret that I didn’t really love Santiago. Our trips away from Santiago were magical, glorious, sight-filled escapes, but we’d always return to the complexities of navigating city living. There were only so many close places to explore, and I feel like we did a good job of exploring them. There were some good […]