Patricio Verde + Two Sisters: The Spring Break Edition (a belated post)

Santiago, Chile

We were so excited to host my sister in Chile that I never posted pictures from her visit. It was a glorious 10 days of cooking, nursing blisters, and cuddling as many animals as we could find.

Mahalia makes friends wherever she goes. This time at the place we stayed outside of Pucón with Austrian Peter.

After an eight-hour layover in Santiago, Mahalia met us in Temuco. We gave her a day to recover from the trip, rented a car, and drove South to Pucón.

Happy hour on the porch in Pucón.

She’d walked around during her layover in sandals, and arrived with a blister on her foot so big, that we named it: Apumanque. Accordingly, we spent a good amount of time lounging around with our feet up— fine with me!

Just some light vacation reading.

Mahalia did tough it out for a day hike in Huerquehue Nat’l Park. Worth the pain, I think.

Araucaria trees (“monkey trees”) on our hike up to Lago Verde. Don’t worry, we went swimming.

My sister the wood sprite.

We attempted another day hike up to some hot springs, but the American guy who owned the land wanted to charge $40 USD per person! No thanks, dude — there’s a perfectly beautiful river just outside your gate.

Top: Mahalia reads by the river while Pat fishes from the other side of the bridge (he caught a few little guys); bottom: Mahalia’s spirit-vehicle.

Next stop: Reserva Huilo Huilo, the Disneyland of hiking. It was quite a sight, but slightly more developed than we usually opt for.

Clockwise from left: inside the tree-inspired hotel in Reserva Huilo Huilo; lunch break at Puerto Fuy; Boar vs. Mahootenany at Huilo Huilo.

We drank wine by this pool in Puerto Fuy, but never took a dip.

Brother- and sister-in-law post-lunch heart-to-heart makes me hyphen-crazy.

Puerto Fuy’s take on the house boat.

Clockwise from top: boulder-hopping in Huilo Huilo; Villarrica Volcano from our hike up to Lago Verde; rainbow pools at the foot of a waterfall in Huilo Huilo.

Black sand beach in Pucón.

Sushi for lunch in Pucón. Our standards were pretty low by that point, but it did the trick.

We dropped off our rental car back in Temuco, but weren’t itching to spend any more time there. It’s a weird city. So we opted for an overnight bus to Santiago, slept very little, and arrived back in the capital at 5:30 a.m.

The fanciest hotel in Santiago took us in for a very early, very luxurious (and very expensive) breakfast, despite our rag-tag appearance. Omelets made to order, amazingly strong coffee, fresh fruit, greek yogurt, unlimited pastry baskets, fresh-squeeze, juice, etc. We almost cried with happiness in our delirium.

One last highlight of Mahalia’s visit was introducing her to Laila & Francisco. As they do, they threw a lavish family lunch with too many courses to count, Borgoña (a Chilean take on sangría with red wine and strawberries) and coarse jokes that I did my best to translate when I could.

Mahalia learns first-hand that my study abroad experience in college was mostly about hedonism.

We shipped Mahootenany off to the airport in a taxi at the appropriate hour, and then kept eating and drinking. It’s what we do best.