Parque Nacional Radal Siete Tazas

One of the places I most wanted to visit during my time living in Chile was the Siete Tazas waterfalls, but the last year passed so fast that Claudio and I didn't manage to make it there, and it was only a couple of weeks ago that we realised that we needed to go soon, because I'm only going to be in Chile for another month! So during the Easter long weekend, we decided to take a day trip to the national park where the waterfall is located.

It takes about three and a half hours of driving south from Santiago to get there, so it's doable in a day. It is quite an enjoyable journey actually, because you pass through a big change in landscape, from the fairly arid landscapes in the centre of the country, where it's still pretty much summer right now, down to the Maule region, where it's much greener, with many more trees and some beautiful autumn colours to look at. According to some definitions, Maule is in the south of Chile, and according to others, it's in the south-central part of the country. But however you define it, it's definitely a completely different landscape to the area around Santiago, despite the fact that it doesn't look that far away on a map!

Our journey there was particularly entertaining, as a whole crowd of beautiful horses passed by! There were probably about fifty of them, including a couple of adorable babies!

Once we reached the National Park (Radal Siete Tazas), we drove along a dirt track until we reached the entrance to the Siete Tazas trail. A couple of days earlier, we had bought our tickets on the CONAF website, so we just had to show the downloads on our phones, and we were on our way to the waterfalls!

The trail to Siete Tazas is quite short, and has a wooden walkway, making it accessible for everyone. 

There is an accessible viewpoint at the end of the first part of the walkway, and then there are some stairs going down to the next viewpoint, where you can see Siete Tazas a bit closer. It's really quite an amazing natural wonder - there are 7 pools of water, all linked by waterfalls, hence the name Siete Tazas (Seven Cups)!

The next viewpoint is without a doubt the best place to see the waterfalls. However, we were quite disappointed by it, as it wasn't possible to spend any reasonable amount of time there enjoying the view. Instead, there was a huge line of people queuing up to take photos there - once it was our turn, we only had a matter of seconds to quickly take in the view and take some pictures. 

I do feel like this is a destination (and one of many) that has been somewhat spoilt because of Instagram, and social media in general. Perhaps it's a bit hypocritical of me to say that, as obviously I do write this travel blog, and I have a travel Instagram, and I like taking nice photos for both of them. So I'm as much a part of the problem as everyone else is.

But it does seem like a lot of destinations have really exploded in popularity since Instagram took off. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like before social media, the majority of people (especially young people) mostly went on beach holidays and city breaks, and historical places and areas of nature weren't so popular. But since Instagram appeared, travel has become a kind of status symbol, and now more and more people are travelling to more and more places, and everyone wants to get those perfect shots to put on their grid. 

The example of this that I always remember is when we went for a walk in Castle Combe in the middle of lockdown, as it's not far from my family home. I would say that 10 or 20 years ago, this quaint, sleepy village was mostly visited by older tourists, and most younger people would have considered it quite a boring place to go to. But since the advent of social media, it has become much more popular as a photo spot. In particular, the bridge in the village has become one of the iconic places to take photos in the Cotswolds, along with Arlington Row in Bibury. 

During the entirety of our visit there (about 2 hours), there was a group of tourists on the bridge. One of them was most likely some kind of "influencer", and was posing for endless photos wearing a flimsy summer dress, despite the fact that it was a cold day in November. The tourists stopped for a few minutes to look at the photos they'd already taken, so we took the chance to take our own photos on the bridge, within a reasonable amount of time. Then one of the group actually asked us if we were done yet, as if they owned the bridge!

We laughed about it later, but it was actually kind of sad that they'd travelled to the other side of the world in the middle of a global pandemic, just to take photos. They wouldn't have any memories of exploring Castle Combe (which actually has plenty of other nice but lesser-known photo spots!) or taking in the local culture, and while one of them may have been a "travel influencer", she wouldn't have been able to provide her followers with any kind of content of value about travel in the Cotswolds - just photos of her posing in a summer dress on a freezing day. 

Obviously that's a very extreme example, and to be fair, everyone at Siete Tazas was considerate and took their photos within a reasonable amount of time. But I think so-called "influencers" like her have created this kind of culture, where taking photos while travelling has become more important than actually enjoying the destination itself.

But this is probably a topic for another blogpost!

Anyway, the view of Siete Tazas was really amazing, even though we only had a few seconds to appreciate it!

Down some steps, there's another, bigger viewpoint, where you can see the two "tazas" at the bottom. The view isn't quite as picturesque as the one at the previous viewpoint, but it's still pretty stunning, and you can actually spend some time there taking it in, listening to the sound of the running water, and just enjoying being in nature.

After going back up the steps, we followed another, slightly longer trail to La Leona (The Lioness) waterfall. There were very few people along the trail, but when we arrived at the end, we were greeted with the sight of another long queue for photos!

The waterfall is 25 metres, but as the viewpoint is quite a distance above it, the view isn't that impressive. We had seen pictures of people swimming in the pool below it, but unfortunately access to the bottom of the waterfall has now been closed to the public.

After seeing Salto La Leona, we followed the circuit back round to the start of the Siete Tazas trail and then drove back towards the entrance of the park, where you can find Velo de la Novia (The Bride's Veil) waterfall. I believe you can go and see this waterfall without buying a ticket to the park, and what makes it even better is that there's a nice big viewpoint there, so you can stay and admire the view as long as you like.

I was expecting to just see one waterfall here, but there were actually several, with the highest one being 40 metres! They were a really incredible sight!

We noticed a few people at the bottom of the waterfalls, and were intrigued as to how we could get down there too, as we could tell it would be amazing to view the falls up close.

A tour guide told us that we could go to some cabañas up the road, and pay 10000 pesos each (about 10 pounds each), which would give us access to a trail down to the bottom of the waterfalls.

Although it sounded expensive, we wanted to make the most of our time in the park, so we decided to go and take the trail.

This was a big mistake!

Although the first part of the trail was relatively easy, the actual descent down to the falls was incredibly dangerous - something the owner of the cabañas neglected to tell us when he took our money. The trail was almost totally vertical and incredibly uneven, and clearly no effort had been taken to make it suitable for tourists. Claudio fell over and scraped his arm very badly at one point, and the trail just kept getting worse and worse. In the end, we turned back before we got to the bottom, as I could feel myself getting more and more scared about what was to come, as well as the prospect of having to climb back up the near vertical terrain.

On our way back towards the carpark, we noticed a green lagoon, and decided to walk across some rocks in order to get closer to it. We wanted to try to get at least some value for our 20000 pesos! However, I tripped over Claudio's foot on one of the rocks, and to make matters worse, he trod on my leg when trying to help me up!

And the lagoon wasn't even that special anyway.

It was a bit of a disappointing end to our day in the national park. If anyone reading this is planning on going, do not attempt the hike down to the waterfalls unless you have proper hiking boots and poles. And actually, even if you do have the right equipment, I'd still advise you to avoid paying 10000 pesos to someone who can't be bothered to even make the trail safe. It's pure robbery, and shouldn't be allowed in what is supposedly a "national" park.

But despite this bad experience, and the crowds in certain parts of the park, I'm still really glad that we finally made it to Siete Tazas. Both the Siete Tazas and Velo de la Novia waterfalls are beautiful sights to see, and a great example of the amazing nature we have here in Chile.

But I don't think Claudio and I will be going hiking again in a hurry!