Qualla: Radal Siete Tazas National Park

Radal Siete Tazas National Park: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bruno Peralta González, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Río Claro does something here that water rarely gets to do in public. Over uncounted millennia it has bored straight down through hard basalt, hollowing out seven round pools stacked one above the next like a flight of stone goblets, each spilling into the one below. Chileans call them the Siete Tazas, the Seven Cups. The water runs an impossible green-blue between black rock walls, and then it gathers itself and leaps free as the 20-meter Salto de la Leona, the Lioness Falls.

Image: Bruno Peralta González | CC BY-SA 4.0

Radal Siete Tazas National Park: Carved by Patience

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit order_242 from Chile, CC BY-SA 2.0. The cups are a lesson in deep time. They were not blasted or dug; they were dissolved and scoured, the river grinding its way through volcanic basalt grain by grain across millions of years until it had sculpted seven consecutive basins and seven small cascades, the drops ranging...

Image: order_242 from Chile | CC BY-SA 2.0

Radal Siete Tazas National Park: The Morning the Cups Ran Dry

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Manuel Repol, CC BY-SA 4.0. On February 27, 2010, the Maule earthquake, one of the most powerful ever recorded, tore through central Chile. In the days after, visitors arrived at Radal Siete Tazas to find the unthinkable: the Seven Cups had emptied. The quake is thought to have opened a fissure in the rock ...

Image: Manuel Repol | CC BY-SA 4.0

Radal Siete Tazas National Park: A Forest of Southern Beeches

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. The whole basin is cloaked in Nothofagus, the southern beeches that define Chilean montane forest, including the threatened Nothofagus glauca and Nothofagus leonii. Rarer trees hide among them, like the Chilean cedar Austrocedrus chilensis. Overhead, if you are lucky, you may hea...

Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

Radal Siete Tazas National Park: Walking the Cups

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Almoritmoxis, CC BY-SA 3.0. The way in starts at the town of Molina, about 55 kilometers and an hour distant by an old but reliable bus. The essential walk is the Sendero Salto La Leona, a short 1.2-kilometer trail that delivers you past all seven basins to the lip of the Leona falls. For more, the long Sen...

Image: Almoritmoxis | CC BY-SA 3.0