Lake Calafquén

LOCATION: ARAUCANIA, CHILE

Hey there. I’m back. I somehow I fell out of my routine in the last few weeks when my computer broke (I spilt water on it) and it’s taken some effort to get myself back into it. But here I am, back again.

The big (and exciting) news around here lately is that we bought a car! We’ll be traveling for a little bit after I finish my teaching period here, and we have some visitors coming over pretty soon so we decided buying and selling before we leave made the most sense for us. It’s been pretty freeing having our own set of wheels and planning out all the weekend trips we’re going to take. Last weekend we went with a couple friends to visit two small towns nearby, Lican Ray and Coñaripe. It was an insanely windy day, but the lake was beautiful. Our first stop was lunch in Lican Ray followed by an easy walk out on the peninsula with stunning views.

After our walk we headed on over to the next town, Coñaripe, with the intent to make a stop at the hot springs. The drive up the mountain to the hot springs was filled with many frequent screeches of “wait, STOP!” as we spotted baby goats along the way. We even saw a llama quite incredibly squeeze itself under a fence to cross the street. Quite possibly the highlight of the drive. Turned out when we finally got to the hot springs we felt like it was a little too expensive for the time that we’d be able to spend there, so we ended up just turning around and driving back down. We all agreed that the beauty of the drive itself was worth it though.

We ended the day back in Villarrica with fajitas (Texas-style), good drinks, and even better conversation. To many more days and nights just like that one!