Snow-covered volcanoes near Choshuenko
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2007
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Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Choshuenko,
Chile
Thursday, January 3, 2008
We caught a morning bus to Panguipulli, and had spectacular views of the conical volcano Villarica. 20kms or so away, with plumes of white smoke coming from its snow-surrounded crater. Panguipulli looked nice, with a lake, but not too different from Valdivia, so it was on another bus to Choshuenko. By now the roads are hilly and the countryside is covered with trees. We got glimpses of the dormant volcano Choshuenko, with snow, but on reaching the village it had disappeared behind the hills. The bus dropped us at a cheap hostel and it was not difficult to select a room. We got the one with the cherry tree outside.
Choshuenko sits beside a small lake with hills all round. How idyllic ... but this is the first time we have encountered tábanas. These are horse-fly type insects, about 15-18mm long, dark tops, orange tummies, green eyes, and a sting. They flew all around us in large buzzing swarms, preferring Pete this time. Luckily they are fairly sluggish, don't like smooth skin, and if they settle on your jumper there is usually time to swat them before the bite comes. Bites are a quick prang, and hours later we have not come up in lumps.
Barb walked barefoot on the edge of the lake to avoid the tábanas, and managed to tread on a bee, which retaliated on the sole of her foot. Bee stings are definitely worse than tábana stings.
We walked some more but not near the lake, Pete flapping his hanky at the pests, Barb limping alongside with a soccer-ball size swelling under her foot. There always has to be a catch to Utopia.
Our hostel serves dinner, but at a hefty 4000 pesos. We searched every shop in town and bought some bread, cheese and ham for tomorrow lunch, strawberry milk for our cornflakes (thank goodness we bought a mammoth cornflakes pack last time). There is no fruit available in town, and the only vegies are very sad, 10 rotting tomatoes to every so-so one. Then we set off on the hunt for somewhere to change US dollars, or we could not afford dinner. No-one could, or would, but the only other restaurant in town accepted Visa cards. Great, we can eat. In Chile our money flows out of our wallets faster than we remember to replenish it from the ATMs.
After a trout dinner, a young female Italian cyclist travelling on her own came in to have a meal and we got chatting. She is very brave, travelling by herself, especially on roads like today's, unsealed and very rough. She told us hair-raising tales of her 2 years working in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where you can find a gun poked at your head through a taxi window.
