Termas el Plomo, Laguna de los Patos and a little rafting

It is nice to be able to escape Santiago every now and then, especially at weekends. Cajon de Maipo is near enough for that so a few days ago we planned a rafting, exploring and hot spring trip with a few friends.

Carretera Austral y Parque Los Glaciares

It has become our Christmas tradition to spend the second half of December somewhere beautiful (...ideally where we have not been before). Since we have so many options to choose from, this year was no exception. The Carretera Austral (...and beyond) had been on our list for some time, and while it is not exactly a journey that we would recommend squeezing into just 2 weeks (which is how much time off we allowed ourselves during this holiday season), we did try to cover some ground and explore its southern part a bit.

Cerro la Carpa and the supermoon

This November's full moon was special: it was supermoon. A supermoon is a new or full moon closely coinciding with perigee (the moon’s closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit). It was also the closest a full moon has been to the earth since 1948 and it will not be as close to Earth until November 2034. It seemed like an excellent opportunity to celebrate and treat ourselves to a little adventure quality time out of the city, which was particularly needed as we had just worked through the entire weekend to meet a deadline.

Calbuco - 19 months on

Last year, Volcán Calbuco in the Los Lagos Region of Chile (about 1000 km south of Santiago, near the city of Puerto Montt) erupted in a spectacular manner. 210 million cubic metres of crushed rock of different sizes were spit as "ash" into the atmosphere, then blown some distance by the wind, before being deposited on the surrounding land.