Guillermo Pollak fled from Prague to Buenos Aires in 1938 with his new wife, Catalina. Finding Buenos Aires too large and too warm, they moved to southern Chile.

Catalina took charge of the kitchen of the Hotel Playa Restaurant, although, says Guillermo, she "didn't even know how to cook a steak."Soon thereafter, the couple took over the concession of the Andean Club's refuge on the volcano, which they held for ten years. The great eruption of 1948 completely destroyed the refuge, and this disaster was soon followed by more bad luck: the Hotel Playa in Pucón burned down. "I forgot to insure it properly and they paid me a fifth of the real value, but fortunately, I had already bought the land where the Antumalal is today."

"We arrived in Pucón on the 12th of October, the same as Columbus," he remembers. That was a rainy day, and the small hotel they had bought in the "pueblito" of Pucón was dark and damp. At first, they thought they had made a mistake. But they were pleasantly surprised when the sun came out and Villarrica Volcano appeared from the clouds.