Pucon

After long bus drive we arrived in Pucon in the evening. Its a small town in the Lakes District region of Chile and is popular with Chilean and foreign tourists as there are so many different activities to do there. It´s like the Chilean equivalent of Queenstown. We had booked to climb volcano Villarica the next day so had to go and sot out the equipment in preparation for an early start the next day. But after getting up at 6am, they decided it was too cloudy to do the climb so we had to postpone it until the weather improved. Instead we hired bikes and cyled out to a group of waterfalls and a lake as the weather away from the hills was actually OK. In the evening we went out to some hot springs, this had been planned as a good rest after climbing the volcano, but it was nice anyway. Didn´t get back into the town until quite late so ended up going out for dinner at 1am. Chilean people tend to eat late (about 9-10pm) and even at 1am there were a lot of places still open. So after a few drinks I finally got to bed at about 6am. Luckily the weather still wasn´t great so there was no chance of climbing the volcano that morning. Most of the people I had met on the tour bus ha to leave that morning, but there were 5 of us that stayed a few days until the next bus came. Spent the day in the town and walked out to some beaches further along the lake. The next day the weather still hadn´t improved and we were beginning to think that the volcano was just a big con to make people stay in the town and that it didn´t actually exist at all as we hadn´t even seen it since we arrived. But we spent the day at the Huerquehue national park doing a really nice walk and were suprised when it actually snowed most of the day, it´s supppossed to be the middle of summer here. But that evening we were told that the forecast for the next day was promising and we should get up early again to be ready to go. Luckily the forecast was right and we got our first glimpse of the volcano as we were on our way to climb it. THe volcano is about 2800m high andyou start the climb from about 1400m, so we were walking in the snow all the way. the fresh snow from the previous day made it quite hard work but it was worth it. The weather was perfect and we had amazing views over the area, including the volcan Llaima, which had been erupting since new years day. The colcano we were climbing was still active, you couldn´t actually see the lava on the day we were there but there was smoke coming from it that burnt your eyes and throat when the wind blew it towards you. The way down was good fun, because of the fresh snow we were able to sledge nearly the entire distance, so it was a lot quicker and easier than the way up.

For our final day in Pucon we had a relaxing day in the town and went out on a boat trip around the lake for a couple of hours. Pucon was a really nice town and could have stayed there longer as there was so much to do and the hostel was really nice, but the next day we got back on the bus and travelled south to Valdivia.