National Park of Chile - Siete Tazas

South of Santiago are several national parks and we different flowerse border, west from Argentina, and made our way to Siete Tazas National Park (7 cups).  It is a fairly small park with several waterfalls you can either drive to or walk less tan 15 minutes to see and many hiking trails.  The Tazas are the pools made at the bottom of each waterfall.  In one área there are 7 falls which make 7 pools.  You can see them all from 2 different viewpoints and they are impressive.  There are a few deep and narrow chasms where the river is way down there and those are impressive too.

The next day it poured rain all day! The lower forests of the park have a lot of tropical vegetation, like bamboo, so these occasional downpours are part of the park, but they are rare.  We did visit several viewpoints and hiked for no more tan 2 hours and during most of that time it was a heavy mist but not a heavy downpour.  When the downpour started again we were near the truck!  Luckily we had rain clothes but still, it was chilly and wet) and the sun did shine some.  What a beautiful park! 

Driving north to Santiago afterwards we saw many grapevines for table grapes and wine, and many stands or cars on the sides of the roads selling peaches, pears, cherries, watermelon, and oranges.  This área south of Santiago is a big producer of fruits shipped all over the world and to the U.S.  Next time I'm buying fruit I will look to see if it came from Chile!

Two of the 7 cups of water created by falls

Pretty warm when we ararrived.   There are 7 falls behind me! One very large with 6 smaller around it 

Walking thru bamboo and lush forest to see the tazas (cups)

a view of fresh snow on the peaks from the uphill hike

the upper part of the hike was cactus, few trees, and tons of different flowers.