Termas Geométricas

In a narrow, forested ravine on the edge of Villarrica National Park, the Chilean architect Germán del Sol turned a hot mountain stream into one of the most photographed bathing places in South America. A single boardwalk, painted a deep red, runs for almost half a kilometre up the gorge, zigzagging over the water and through the native forest, and off it open a string of slate-lined pools, each steaming in its own clearing. The contrast of the red timber against wet dark stone and dense green is the whole idea, and in rain or snow it is at its most striking.

The water comes from dozens of natural springs that emerge in the ravine at around 80°C and are led, without filtering, into the pools, where it has cooled to somewhere between about 35 and 46°C. Different sources give the number of pools as seventeen or twenty, spread along the walkway so that each feels almost private. Cold mountain water falls through the middle of the gorge, and the complex was deliberately built around the stream rather than over it.

Del Sol designed the complex in phases between 2002 and 2009, with red changing huts placed along the path and the pools set into the slope. The project became a reference work for building lightly in a natural setting: the architecture is little more than a line through the forest, yet it gives the whole ravine a shape. The pools themselves are covered in slate, so the colour of the walkway is the only strong note in the ravine.

Getting there

The springs lie in the hills above Coñaripe, in Chile's Los Ríos region. Pucón is about 25 km away as the crow flies but roughly 87 km by road, around two hours' drive; from Coñaripe the trip takes about half an hour. The last stretch into the national park is gravel, which an ordinary car can manage in dry weather. There is no direct public bus, so visitors drive or come with tours from Pucón. The nearest airports are Pucón's Aviador C. Campos Airport (CPC), about 90 km away, and La Araucanía International Airport (ZCO) near Temuco, about 93 km away.