A Bauhaus Palace in the Wilderness During our travels through Chile in November 1999, my wife and I stayed at the Hotel Antumalal in Pucón. Upon our arrival we discovered a long, low, modern building with a dozen or so rooms overlooking the vast Lake Villarica. The hotel, cut into the hillside above the lake, reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright's Kaufmann home, Falling Water, in the woods of western Pennsylvania. All of the interior spaces had large picture windows which commanded magnificent views of the countryside. The lamps, tables, wall panelling and other objects of both function and decoration were cut from the thick trunks or branches of local trees. The service here is most uncommonly friendly and attentive. As an example, when we had returned from a day of adventures with our car caked in dust from miles of driving along dirt roads, the staff, unbidden, washed our car for us. We ate several meals at the hotel. The food was good and well prepared. It was served either in the simple dining room, which was filled with living plants and light, or outdoors on the balcony just outside under a natural roof of flowering wistaria. In either case, magnificent views and sunsets were an inseparable part of our dining experience. Our breakfasts in the dining room were accompanied by any number of pleasant Gershwin tunes and a fresh pot of genuine coffee. Although not visible from the hotel itself, Mount Villarica looms up above it. An active volcano, the crown of Villarica smokes and occasionally spits. And from time to time, the volcano itself erupts and sends down a fiery flow of molten magma. This hotel has been called, quite rightly, the finest wilderness resort in South America. Additional information about Hotel Antumlal can be found on the Internet at their website at http://www.antumalal.com/.
A Living Garden The grounds surrounding the hotel were immaculately tended. Large and hearty rhododendrons bloomed, hedgerows of daisies were in flower, and fresh marigolds were preparing for a summer yet to come. Terraces punctuated the steep terrain either to provide a place to sit with a view of the lake or a sanctuary for more and varied flora. All was richly green and lush.
A Remarkable Man The owner of the hotel was an elderly man named Willy Pollack. Born in Prague around 1913, he had come to Chile in 1939 fleeing Nazi persecution. And here in the southern hemisphere thousands of miles from the city of his birth, he had built a new life for himself in Pucón. Quiet and self effacing, he still lives with his wife amidst the Eden he has created here. Over the years, this small hotel has welcomed many a famous personage, some of whom are depicted in a wonderful montage of photos in the lobby which were taken by Mr. Pollack himself. Among the distinguished guests pictured there are Adlai Stevenson, James Stewart, Barry Goldwater, and Prince Philip with his wife the Queen. We prevailed upon our proprietor's goodwill to take our picture on the balcony outside the dining room and overlooking the lake. Mr. Pollack, despite his age, retains a vigorous and vital spirit which he quickly showed in recounting how, only a decade earlier, he had returned to his beloved Prague to celebrate just two days after the Soviet troops had finally left. Our request for permission to take his picture was a deflected with a gentle request that we remember him in our hearts.
A Remarkable Library I have often observed that you can tell a great deal about someone from his library. By virtue of having booked ourselves one of the two suites in the hotel, we had a wonderful sitting room containing a remarkable library. More than a few books and authors dear to my heart were on those short shelves: John Knowles' A Separate Peace and Iris Murdoch's The Red and The Green quickly caught my eyes. But the casual plundering that any book lover undertakes when he finds himself in a new library yielded up some more surprising treasures. One volume was a first edition from 1959 of Peter Drucker's Landmarks of Tomorrow. Inside the front cover was the following inscription, "To Willy Pollock, With admiration for a great creative achievement... and with thanks for the gift of peace and friendship. Peter F. Drucker." Another volume, this one not inscribed, spoke poignantly of the history and life of the man who had created this remarkable place. This was a first edition of To Sing With The Angels by Maurice Hindus. The volume's formal dedication read as follows: "To the memory of the students of the Charles University, Praha. Massacred by the Gestapo in the night of November 17, 1939." Yes, we will remember Antumalal in our hearts, and we will return there in spirit often, and in person as well one day.
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