the forgotten paths travel project
This is an invitation to participate and rediscover the joy of exploration and the thrill of stepping into the unknown.
Walking forgotten paths in this adventure is like reading a secret chapter of the Earth's story, one that few have had the privilege to experience. Unlike popular Chilean travel destinations, where the presence of crowds can diminish the sense of wilderness or authentic experience, this travel project offers a sanctuary for those seeking solitude and a deeper communion with the natural world.
At the source of headwaters of Trancura and Cochiguaz Rivers, the sounds of nature prevail over human chatter, and one can truly listen to the whispers of the wind over the foothills of the Andes Mountains or the symphony of an Araucania Monkey Puzzles forest at dawn. This adventure serves as a powerful tool for personal growth and offers a rare opportunity to step away from the chaos of everyday life and reconnect with oneself on a deeper level. ​
​Human culture is connected to local geologic landscapes. Deep connections are clear from cultural stories, art, songs, poems, traditions, and ceremonies that feature or celebrate landscapes. Significant geologic heritage sites add cultural value when they provide a scenic setting for celebrations, family and friends reunions, vacations, spiritual reflection, and other shared experiences.
Itineraries in this adventure transform geological landscapes into cultural landscapes, so that rocks and landscapes can take on new meanings for people when viewed from a cultural perspective. The stories in the rocks and their cultural associations will provide opportunities for those who booked this adventure to reconnect with the local heritage and experience a renewed sense of wonder. Such an approach can help those who might have little interest in geological details to be linked with cultural roots and enhance a sense of place and connections with the natural world.
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Beyond taking beautiful pictures of the landscapes and night sky, exploring and walking through sacred forests and valleys, this travel adventure will put you also at the heart of where a meal is made - in the kitchen. Beyond the realms of the kitchen, Elite Brands Culture Discovery Tours and our business partners in this adventure, incorporated cultural excursions, visits to historical landmarks, day and night explorations. These extra activities will help you to understand and appreciate not just the landscape but the essence of everything you will be learning about.
EMRACING new experiences
The area called Patagonia is an enormous 400,000 square miles spanning across two countries. It is divided into Northern and Southern Patagonia, separated by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. ​
In Northern Patagonia you will discover the culture and culinary secrets of Araucania, with the landscape known for its natural beauty. This is the region and traditional home of the Mapuche - Pehuenches - “People of the Piñon”. ​
​The name, Araucanía, comes from the emblematic and endangered Monkey Puzzle tree, or Araucaria, that every year in autumn, sheds its pine nuts (piñones).
Since beginning under the comforting shadows of this tree, the Mapuche - Pehuenches people felt at home and today, the Pehuén forest holds not only the resources their community depends on, but also the traditional knowledge that is inherently tied to their ancestral land, cultural practices and values. ​
Mapuche families living in forested and mountainous Andean landscapes of Trancura-Pocolpen area have long depended on local resources and for many Mapuche people, the use of wild edibles is a source of cultural identity and is reflecting a deep connection to the land. Mapuche have food-related rules in their cultural practices and the food is a marker of their cultural identity.
The Atacama Desert may be the driest non-polar place on Earth but on its southern fringe is a stretch of vineyard-lined hills under sky full of stars - the Chile’s mystical “Valley of the Diaguitas”. Thanks to its high altitudes, low population density and near non-existent cloud cover, this valley is a star gazing heaven.
March, April and May are the best times in Atacama Desert to watch the sky at night.
When staying at the Valley, you will be able to gaze at the stars, planets, and constellations in the night sky. This leg of the Adventure will help you to understand our place Earth within it, and experiencing the sheer wonder of the night sky with no crowds.​ This Adventure offers a unique experience that combines science, nature, and spirituality.
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Gazing at the stars can be therapeutic, providing a sense of calm and peace. It encourages mindfulness and allows us to disconnect from our busy lives and connect with the universe.
day 1 - mari mari Araucania
Whether you’re taking extra time travel to Southern Patagonia or explore the capital city of Santiago, you need to book your flight and arrive in Temuco where we will be waiting for you at the airport and transfer you to the lodge in Curarrehue.
Evening: Welcome Dinner at the lodge
day 2, and 3 - Cooking with Araucaria Pine Nuts & Wilde Foods
These Exclusive Hands On Cooking Presentation - Workshops are an exceptional opportunity to meet Anita Epulef Panguilef, an amazing Mapuche-Pehuenche woman that recognizes the urgency to protect ancestral knowledge, native seeds, food sovereignty, and the defense of life. ​​
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Anita cooks all year round in her ancestral restaurant located in Curarrehue (from Mapudungun: kura rewe 'stone altar'). This small commune is located in the southern part of Chile, in the Cautín Province in the Araucanía Region. At "Cocina Mapuche de Anita Epulef", she ensures that the autonomy of her business relies on building networks among locals to supply products to her restaurant. Anita and her family also cultivate family land to make sure that land is not abandoned or taken away by forest companies.
In her cooking, she continuously searches and looks for ways to maintain her meals for balance through nutrition. There is no "Menu List" in her restaurant and the meals always "spontaneously emerge”. "Cocina Mapuche de Anita Epulef" being the #24 on the list of Best Chilean Restaurants doesn't affect her. Today, from the kitchen of her restaurant, Anita manages to transmit, through her meals, the culture, the value of seeds, the importance of networking, and the urgent task of sustaining the food sovereignty of the Araucania Mapuche people.
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​Inspired by Mapuche-Pehuenche ancestors' land and heritage, Anita is looking for the opportunity to meet and connect with the tour participants through food and look forward to sharing the Mapuche - Pehuenche culinary recipes of Yesterday and Today. During the Hands On Cooking Presentation you will have an opportunity not only to learn recipes but also listen to fascinating stories about the culture and heritage of Araucana's Mapuche - Pehuenche people.​
Exclusive Hands On Cooking Presentation - Workshops focus will be learning original Mapuche traditional dishes native to Trancura-Pocolpen. All dishes will be prepared in ways that reflect Mapuche - Pehuenche food cultures, using ingredients used prior to Pacification of Araucanía. Other food products, meat and fish will be supplied by Mapuche local producers.
The Mapuche - Pehuenche are an ancient people, with roots that trace back into the slumbering shadows of prehistory. They were very likely close relatives of groups inhabiting the Argentinean pampas, as well as the Patagonian Aonikenk people and the Selk’nam of Tierra del Fuego, with whom they shared the traditions of the ancient Andean hunters of the Archaic Period. The ethnonym comes from the Mapudungun language: mapu (land) and che (people), hence ‘people of the land’, a term by which they are often known. They long ago migrated over the great southern Andes west into Chile. In the 16th century, the Spanish began to arrive in this region and change the course of everything.
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​​In Mapuche culture it matters when one eats and how one eats—there is a protocol to follow. Eating is a social event, an important family gathering, and a meaningful cultural practice. Eating together indicates trust and loyalty; it is a binding tie between family members, and reflects social norms and expectations of how a Mapuche person is supposed to behave and act socially.
Typical Mapuche food and beverages are often enjoyed as part of the activities and rituals together with the family or with a larger social group, and sometimes things are reminisced about too. In other words, the process of creating talk, the very action of speaking of food, of eating habits, and of the south in dialogue with other people also constructs Mapuche identity and a feeling of togetherness and belonging. Food and herb names that are of Mapuche origin would be said in Mapudungun. By using Mapudungun, the Mapuche can indicate their belonging to and knowledge of the Mapuche culture. In addition, words in Mapudungun can be cultural markers: details, such as certain food or place names.
day 2, and 3 - substitute experiences
Question: Together with my husband we are looking into booking this Adventure but my husband is not interested in Exclusive Hands On Cooking Presentation - Workshops. Is it possible to be offered a substitute experience for my husband?
Yes, we will arrange alternative experiences if some people choose not to participate in cooking activities. These specific experiences may be subject to additional fees.
Fishing
The Trancura River is known for its trout and salmon, is an excellent river for the fly and Catch-and-release fishing.
All fishing gear, fly and spinning, life jackets and refreshments including water or soda will be provided.
Horseback Riding
The Criollo horses are very strong and surefooted, and you will feel safe and comfortable riding up and down steep hills, across bridges and through small water crossings without hesitation.
day 4 - cultivating the history and the secrets off art & honey from trankurra
Immerse yourself in the natural wealth of Lof Trankura, and meet Juana Faúndez, the Guardian of the territory ancestral and caregiver of seeds. On her land, you will discover a lush and diverse Andean orchard! A unique experience awaits you this day where you will be connected with nature and admire the impressive variety of vegetables, medicinal and aromatic plants, tubers, flowers, and fruit trees. This lush orchard is a true treasure that you can explore and discover guided by Juanita who will share her vast knowledge and passion for caring for the earth and their crops.
In her kitchen, next to the stove, time stops. Here you will be invited for a lunch and toasting wheat, tortillas with embers, roasting potatoes, saving seeds, drinking mate and learning about Juana Faúndez close relationship with the Mapuche culture.​​
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You will step into another culture with a fascinating visit to Marisol Coñuequir Panguilef, a local Mapuche woman who became an entrepreneur thanks to honey.
She won a scholarship to train in the United States and today she makes by hand organically friendly natural soap and cosmetics products using the knowledge of local medicinal plants. She is the beekeeping pioneer in the area and maintains her hives in this beautiful but climatically unfavorable setting of the Andes in Araucania.
Marisol is from a very traditional family, her father Lonco, was the administrative head of this community and she is a beautiful example of how someone can stick to her cultural heritage and be successful in a society based on Araucania Mapuche People's values.
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​Claudia is a self learning artist inspired by naïf art. She creates an honest, simple, unaffected and unsophisticated art that is capable of revealing the essential, without further artifice.
Her paintings are bridge between the spiritual and earthly worlds and are encouraged to turn viewer inward, with radical and compassionate honesty, analyzing own habits and multiple relationships.
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Every of her created painting is accompanied by short poems with purpose that each work and its words offer a pause, a space in which the viewer pauses, looks at himself and delves into the transformative journey of the human experience, listening to the voices of nature as a reflection of his own identity as in times marked by polarity, pain and grief, we need to be nourished by beauty, harmony and hope.
day 5 - Walking through sacred forest
​​Straddling the Andes and the border between Argentina and Chile, an ancient ‘Lost World’-looking forest persists. It occurs in fragments, dominated by the extraordinary Pehuén tree called in the Mapuche Mapudungun language.
For more than 200 million years the Pehuén tree has withstood the ages passing, seen the birth and death of stars, witnessed the incredible march and loss of the dinosaurs, watched the evolution of mammals and the tectonic drift of the continents. These ancient trees have faced glacial ice and raging fires, floods and droughts, volcanic eruptions and sunspots, but the threat of extinction has never been so real as now, when the Pehuén (monkey puzzle tree) may lose all of its pieces along with the Mapuche - Pehuenches heritage and culture.
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As you walk through the forest, get ready to be mesmerized by the kaleidoscope of colors and the profound sensation of serenity that will fill you. This walk will be a celebration of human spirituality. As we immerse ourselves and get spiritually connected with these trees, we will learn that the sacred does not just reside there but also inside the depths of our own hearts.
Evening: Farewell Dinner to Araucania.
5 nights
This wellness lodge is located in a rural area 15 minutes drive on gravel road from the town Curarrehue. It has trails within the enclosure, river and a beautiful viewpoint in a small lagoon and some of the most spectacular views of Araucania forests. The lodge is rustic, comfortable, well-equipped with heated rooms. The rooms are very clean and comfortable with a private bathroom. A fast Wi-Fi Starlink Internet access available 24 hours. Beds with good pillows and sheets. The lodge owners are attentive, friendly, helpful and with great motivation they work hard to make sure to give you a great experience during your stay at their lodge. Some rooms are located on the top floor which does require the ability to climb multiple flights of stairs. The kitchen in the lodge serves great food.