Fiery drinks and snowy peaks

The southern winter has caught up with us again and, just like in previous years, the mountains around Santiago have had their first coat of fresh snow at the end of May, while down here in the city we finally received some badly needed rain.

Valle de Aguas Calientes

It is early May and the summer heat has given way to a pleasantly sunny central-Chile-autumn: the perfect time for some beautiful hikes! With the International Workers' Day falling on a Tuesday this year, we thought we'd make an extra-long weekend of it and spent it in Las Trancas near the Nevados de Chillán volcano complex, about 400km south of Santiago.

Cerro La Leonera - 4950(ish) meters above sea level

One of the benefits of living in Santiago are the numerous hiking opportunities that present themselves nearby. This is a blog post about a trek to a nearly 5000m peak, which had been on our to-do list for a few years now, and which we managed to "bag" a couple of weekends ago q-:

Bariloche

The last leg of our end-of-the-year-2017 trip took us to Bariloche which is (apparently!) the most visited spot in Patagonia. It is a nice place and with all of the amenities (including decent veggie food options), although we would not consider it "real Patagonia"... at least compared with where we had just travelled from it seems a little too manicured, with nice lawns and nice houses and golf clubs etc.