Winter activities: Termas, Snowboarding and Patagonia

Work kept us fairly busy the last few months and it is time for a quick catch-up post to document what we have been up to this winter to escape the city every now and then:

In May, we tried visiting Termas el Plomo, one of the hot springs in the Cajon de Maipo. Unfortunately, when we got to Embalse del Yeso, the road had been blocked by falling rocks due to heavy rains in the area, and we could not progress further. These things happen, but we did not let this ruin our weekend, so we quickly changed the plan and headed towards Termas Colina, where we had already been before.

This time though, what greeted us was a bit different as the heavy rains had also caused a landslide in the Termas Colina area. As a result, the little hot pools we enjoyed in the previous year had been covered in rocks, mud and everything else…. The hot water still kept trickling out of the hillside, so we got out our spade and dug ourselves a hole towards which we redirected the water from the spring. As it was very hot, we had to do some hydraulic engineering and balance the inflow of hot and cold water. But two hours later we had our hot bath and it was great to watch the stars from our DIY bathtub in the Andes, surrounded by some impressive scenery :o)

Hard at work with the spade

Enjoying the sunset

Another winter outing we embarked on was snowboarding in one of the ski areas near Santiago. This was our first time with the snow crowds in 5 years! A few things to consider:

1. Thursdays seems to be the discounts day (i.e. for ski passes, classes, etc... especially if you have a Entel phone, we know how random this sounds. But there you go.)
2. If you avoid the high season and weekends, the experience is a lot more pleasant.
3. There seems to be a bit of a business/mafia about a few snow related activities, for example, everyone is required to have snow chains even if the road is clear, there is no risk of icing. Conveniently there is a place just before the police control stops you to ask you for your chains where you can rent them for 10.000CLP… The other alternative is that you pick up some Chilean hitch hikers that don’t look too much like skiers and you say that you are going to “Corral Quemado” – then you should be allowed to continue without chains… but if you follow this approach of course make sure that you won’t actually need chains that day! Parking is also a mess at the slopes… police give out tickets fairly randomly (we got one ourselves and we were not in an area marked as not for parking, oh well.)

Classes are an option so, as we both had little to no experience with a snowboard, we went for them. We hired the boards, helmets and snow boots. We also got a pass to the “baby” slopes with the classes and really enjoyed ourselves. The hardest bit was actually to go back up the slope with the ski lift pulley thing. The following day, the smaller one of us had a leg full of bruises (a clear sign that fun was had!).

In June, we had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Coyhaique. A city located about 1350km south from Santiago. There are daily flights from the capital. The scenery was beautiful, sunny but cold: the grass and trees were covered with frost everywhere. The trip was work related and involved driving from Coyhaique to Los Antiguos (in Argentina), approximately 4h. The road is in many parts a dirt track, but it is in good condition (especially with good weather). The scenery is beautiful but it is worth not to underestimate the length of the journey as it is very long. Unfortunately, as this was part of a work trip with a very tight schedule, we were not able to stop in the Marble Caves.  This is one item that we have left in our to-do list! From Los Antiguos, we travelled the Argentinian side of Patagonia all the way to Bariloche.

Some brief impressions of this trip in below slideshow: