Radal Siete Tazas

"A strong man and a waterfall always channel their own path."
~Anonymous

Monday, December 8th to Wednesday, December 10th 2008

The Radal Siete Tazas park was a detour on my way to Pucon. It´s a one day trip between amazing waterfalls and clear rivers that was extended to 3 days of camping due to irrational public transportation. To get there I took with Gili and Harel a 4 hours bus to the small town of Molina and continued with another one that left at 17:00 to the park itself. The bus actually didn´t made it to the park entrance and dropped us off near the tiny village of Radal where we camped near a small clear river and shared a conversation with 2 more Israelis and a Chiliean\American couple. The next day we had a 6.5km to climb to reach the park main attraction, a series of 7 linked waterfalls, but after 30 minutes we caught a ride on the back of a local police pickup that toke us almost to the entrance. Few more minutes of walking took us through the ranger booth into a wooden boardwalk that descended to the Claro (clear in Spanish) river and the famous falls. Inside a narrow creek we found what we came for - a loud clear series of seven consecutive waterfalls falling into amazingly clear and colds pools of water. We spent almost an hour admiring the sight and climbed around to find better angles before we left. Continuing 400 meters down the trail we found ourselves looking from above at a 40m waterfall called Salto de la Leona. We descended further to the river itself only to found that the river is way too cold to swim in, in fact it was way to cold to deep your feet inside.. we completed the circle and returned to the main road going down 3km more to reach the observation terrace for the biggest waterfall yet - the 50m high majestic Velo de la Novia (Bride's Veil) fall where we ate a light lunch before hitching a ride back to our campsite. Since the only bus back leaves at 7:30am we spent another night camping next to a cheerful campfire after a bath in the nearby spring and before we packed our camp and headed towards Pucon...