My name's Charlotte and I have a passion for travelling and documenting my adventures through writing and photography. Having lived in several countries and visited 30, I've seen a lot of the world, but still have much more left to explore! Here on this blog, I do full recaps of all my trips - big and small - and write about a range of travel-related topics. Hope you enjoy and find plenty of travel inspiration!
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Saturday, 29 April 2023
Parque Nacional Vicente Pérez Rosales
Tuesday, 18 April 2023
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!
Friday, 7 April 2023
My Dream Travel Destinations: Updated!
Europe
South America
Image of Salento, Colombia by Chris Rodriguez from pexels.com
North America
Africa
2023: Since 2019, I still haven't been to Africa, and I still want to go to Morocco. However, because of my recent interest in ancient archaeological sites, I would now put Egypt at the top of my African travel list. It would be great to do a cruise along the Nile, seeing sights like the pyramids, the Sphinx and Abu Simbel. I would also really like to visit the southern part of Africa to see the amazing wildlife there!