Here is an update of how far we have come and the distance we have driven from La Paz, Bolivia to Puerto Varas, Chile.  We have traveled a total of 4,728 kilometers or 2,938 miles over a total of 48 days.

A – Copacabana and La Paz, Bolivia

B – Sucre, Bolivia

C -Uyuni, Bolivia

D – San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

E – La Serena, Chile

F – Vina del Mar, Chile

G – Santiago, Chile

H- Santa Cruz, Chile

I – Pucon, Chile

H- Puerto Varas, Chile

So we have great wi-fi in Puerto Varas this weekend so I will be sharing some video and pictures of the last month that we were not able to upload due to slow or challenging internet…. enjoy!  Feel free to subscribe to our youtube channel.

Volcano Villarrica looking into the crater.

Sunset on the Solar de Uyuni (timelapse)

Walking on the clouds in Uyuni

Timelapse of the kids climbing on rocks

Sunset timelapse over Lake Villarrica

On our last day in Pucon we went to our second Termas or hot springs, this time we went to Termas Rio Trancura.  It was just 20 minutes outside Pucon and although not as spectacular as Termas Geometricas is was very nice.  They had 8-10 pools with views of Volcano Villarrica, great last day.  off to Patagonia tomorrow.

We absolutely loved the area around Pucon, the activities, the lake, the volcano and the weather was spectacular.  We were able to take it easy for 10 days and re-charge our batteries to prepare for a lot of driving in the next couple of days.

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody from the travel trotters!

I woke up today before the sun came up and was picked up by van headed to the Volcano Villarrica.  I went up the mountain with a guided tour and a group of 4 Americans and 1 woman from Valparaiso,  the hike started with a ride up a ski chairlift.

We then hiked through volcanic rock for 2 hours, we then strapped on crampons, and hiked up through snow for another hour and a half.

The top of the volcano was devoid of snow and after a short hike we arrived at the crater.  The crater was about 1/4 mile across with a small hole (maybe 10 feet across) with lava visible at the bottom.  Unfortunately it was not burping lava at the time but it was very exciting anyway.

After 20 minutes of taking pictures at the top we descended using little sleds and then hiked the rest of the way.  It was quite amazing and my first scent of an active volcano; kind of a big deal for a geologist, thanks to Maddy for watching the kids while I completed my adventure.

Volcano Villarrica is a stratovolcano type which means that it has layered like buildups from different types of eruptions.  It has Stromboli type eruptions basaltic lava, which look like orange geysers coming out of the top which happened in 1995 at Villarrica.   It can also have Plinian type eruptions which are more rare which can include pyroclastic flows which kill lots of people like what happened at Mt Vesuvius.

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful lake and a gorgeous Saturday so we went down to the local harbor and rented a two hour boat ride, we decided that we would get the afternoon ride so the kids could swim in the water instead of the sunset cruise. We able to get an 8-10 person boat and we were the only people who wanted to go at that time, there wasn’t much room left anyway after the kids took over the cutty cabin.  We cruised out of the harbor being followed by a huge double decker duck boat, the kids loved it.

The captain let us help with the rigging and other boating activities, it made be long for my boat at home.  We sailed across the town peninsula around the rich resorts and moored the boat so we could visit a private beach, we swam into the beach and played in the sand for a while before heading back to the harbor.  Overall we had a great time, we might have had a major argument about chips and who decides who gets to eat them, par for the course as they say.

We had dinner at home and I ran back down to town after the kids were in bed to retrieve my water bottle which we left at a restaurant at lunch and there were so many people out in town and so many little kids up at 11pm.  We are definitely the early birds around here.

On Thursday maddy had a full day of work and the girls had a bit of trouble finishing school so we went down to the Plaza de Armas and had lunch and whoever was done with their work got to play on the playground.  The girls were a bit more motivated then and got their work done.   After finishing school and playing on the playground we went to the black sand beach in Pucon.  Maddy thought she might meet us but was too busy, we ended up picking her up after the girls wore down at the beach.

This week we instituted a new policy for schooling, whoever has 3 straight days of concentrating on school and getting their work done without whining and complaining gets one free day off school.  This helped a bit, Mirabelle was the only one who completed three straight days, she was going to save her get out of school free card but she was having trouble concentrating on Friday and decided to use it and got the rest of the day off.

After school on Friday we went north of the city to A waterfall the Los Ojos del Caburgua which was a lovely falls, we ate lunch there and traveled to lake Caburgua and enjoyed some more beach time.

With as incredible weather as we have been having why not take advantage of the beach time.  We left at around 5:30 and it was a mad house getting out of the area, we learned that this was the last weekend before the schools head back into session after summer break.  We also ran into a massive traffic jam outside of pucon, since there is basically only one way of the area, poor planning since the road can be cut of if the volcano blows….

We decided to postpone school the next morning to go to an amazing thermal hot springs located on the far side of Volcano Villarrica, the drive was about 2 hours away from where we were staying.  It was so worth the drive, the springs were located on a flank of the volcano in a gorge with vertical walls, the valley was likely caused by faulting.  We got there when they opened at 11am and bought our tickets and ate our lunch, we then hiked all the way up the gorge which was lined with pools that were built out of shale in angular shapes, hence the geometricas.

The valley was filled with ferns and trees that towered over your head, the hot springs typically seeped out of the walls of the valley and were captured in the pools or conveyed to other pools further down the valley.  The valley bottom was a natural stream where pools could be drained and cold water was diverted; red bridges suspended over the streams allowed you to walk through the area.   When you sat in the pools the sound of the stream created unique ambiance.

There was a waterfall at the top of the gorge, we stored our clothes and tested out the 15 to 20 pools that were available.  We spent the better part of 4 hours playing and swimming in the pools that were usually no more than 3-4 feet deep.  We had a second lunch so the girls didn’t run out of energy and then headed home.  We stopped in Villarrica and had dinner and watched some break dancers, the kids were pretty amazed, I was too back in the 80’s.

We left the Colchogua valley on Sunday morning driving seven hours south to lake country of Chile, we arrived at Lago Villarrica which is located beneath the Volcano of the same name and looms over the area with a cap of snow and a wisp of smoke at the top.  We arrived at our cabana for the next 11 days and met the owners who were homeopathic doctors from Seattle.

We settled in and took in the sunset with views of almost the entire lake.  On Monday we completed school and Maddy tried to work at our place but couldn’t get decent internet so she drove down to town; school was very hard after the weekend, nobody wanted to do anything.  We finally finished up school at 2pm which was very late for us, Maddy came back and we all went to the beach.  It was really warm and the lake was nice enough to swim in, the sand was a dark volcanic color which the girls thought was pretty cool.  We had dinner out in Pucon, looked at some options for activities in the area and then went grocery shopping.

The next day after getting situated we grabbed our list of the best waterfalls in the area and hit the best two, Salto Leon and Salto La China, both were amazing, both were located on the northern side of Volcano Villarica and were about a 1 hour ride from Pucan.  Salto Leon was a double fall with quite a bit of water flowing over while the Salto La China was smaller with a more accessible pool.  La China also had a Canopy or zip-line for the kids; yessss check that off the list, for cheap too.  It was Julie’s first time doing the zip-line after refusing last year in Costa Rica, good for her!!

We tried to go to a termas or hot springs but they were cleaning their pools.  We headed back to our Cabana and cooked dinner put the kids to bed and enjoyed an amazing sunset.

We are spending 4 days in the colchagua valley in central Chile, an hour south of Santiago.  The area is somewhat built up with wine infrastructure, there are 15-20 places to taste wine in the valley.  About half of the tastings require you to tour the facilities prior to tasting wine and all of the tastings require you to spent money on the tasting.  Most of the tastings are somewhat expensive but the bottles of wines are very inexpensive at least from the wineries.  I have been impressed with most of the red wines the Carmaneres, Cabernet Savignons, and other other red blends.  Maddy has loved the Savignon Blanc from a couple different wineries.  We are staying at a house that is situated in the middle of several wine fields which makes for enjoyable evening walks and interesting jogging in most mornings.  The smoke is not bad but we still are not able to see the larger more distant Andes range mountains.

We have been averaging about two wineries a day, mostly because the distance of the wineries, the tours usually take an hour or more, the pours of the wineries are substantial ( about ½ glass to 2/3 of a glass) and we are a bit paranoid of the police checks that we have heard of although we have encountered none.  We started near our house at Vina Estampa where we met Phillipe who was great and gave us lots of suggestions and was very friendly, we bought our first wine a sauvignon blanc, which are from grape that come from the coast.  We then went to Vina Mont Gras and had a tasting with a Brazilian Sommelier our host switched between English and Portuguese with ease, it was a blast.  We went down town and had dinner at the Santa Cruz social club it was a complete disaster, Mirabelle was hiding from the waiter and Julie had a meltdown about something that didn’t matter.

The next day we drove out toward the coast to visit Vina Santa Cruz, which had a teleferico and various other museums, we arrived at 1pm but they said we couldn’t start a tour until 2 and said we had to have a tour to do a wine tasting; they were very controlling about the schedule.  We signed up for the tour and left, we found an organic winery down the road who allowed us to taste wine right away, even after Vina Santa Cruz told us there were no other wineries in the area.  We did go back and take the tour which took us up the teleferico and we self-toured several small exhibits on the native people of the area.  We then had to wait until 3 to get our tour of the actual winery, we bugged them enough that they gave us an abbreviated tour and we got to taste wines after 10 minutes.  We were not about to buy any wines though.

The next day we went to one of the more famous wineries in the valley it was called Viu Manet and it has some of the oldest vines in the valley, some close to 100 year old vines that produce less fruit but are more flavorful.  We also learned that the Cholchagua valley was known for really good Merlot prior to 1994 when a grape expert came and told them that they had misidentified the grapes as Carmenere, which was extinct in Europe, so now Chile has the best Carmenere wines.  We had to wait for an English tour so we went to another winery Laura Hartwig, which was near the town of Santa Cruz.  Laura Harwig is more of a boutique winery but they had very good reds.  They also had a polo ground that was used by the nephew of the owners.  We went back to Viu Manet and we got a personal tour with their English speaking guide and got a ride on a horse drawn carriage and a barrel tasting.  The wines were very tasty and they were very cheap when you bought them at the winery.

The next day we went to a part of Santa Cruz in the Colchagua Valley and visited three wineries Vina Montes, Vina Apaltagua and Vina Veyen.  The first Vina Montes had a beautiful winery built with using the concepts of feng shui, lots of pools and they had Gregorian chants for their wines, seemed a bit over the top but it was a pretty area.  Vina Apaltagua was next and it was a brand new winery we were their fourth customers to visit their new tasting room, it was a great time we loved our host and we bought lots of wine.  The final winery of the day was Vina Veyen which was the oldest winery in the valley with amazing old buildings with Chilean style architecture, large barns with a huge barrel rooms, with lots of room for the kids to run.  The wine was Carmenere and Cabrenet Savignon, the wines were great but the prices were steep.  Thus ends our wine tour in Colchagua.

Soccer games

So we finally bought a soccer ball!  Julie has been asking for a ball forever and she has been playing with the boys at recess so she is excited to play.  It was extremely hot in Santa Cruz so we have been playing in the morning and at night.  We have had some epic games; so much fun all five of us.

Vineyard walks

The place we are renting is surrounded by vineyards and we are allowed to go walking around and explore, we have been taking walks during the evenings around sunset when the light is just perfect in the vineyards.  It has been a special time with the kids and with Maddy, I have included one picture and will post a ridiculous video one of me jumping over a stream in slow motion that the kids took, I laugh my head off every time I see it.  We also had access to a telescope which we used for science class every night to check out the moon and other plants, the girls were so into it, we might have to get a scope at home.