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Pucon and Valdivia
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Tuesday 10th - Went into town after breakfast with Amanda (Irish girl) to check out tour prices and see what's about. Pucon is quite pretty, but it's really small town - only really one main street with masses of tour companies, restaurants and outdoor clothing type shops in it.
There's an active volcano in Pucon which is supposed to be amazing to climb - it takes around 5hours to climb it and you can look over the rim and see the lava. Then afterwards, you can slide down again on the snow!! You have to have nice weather to do the climb, and the forecast for the week wasn't good so 6 of us from the hostel booked up the tour for Friday, which is when they thought it would next be good to go.
Amanda and I had a quick look around the shops and found that they are quite expensive so we gave up shopping, grabbed some food from the supermarket and headed back to the hostel to make lunch.
No clue what happened to the rest of the day!! The hostel is really homely and has cable TV and comfy sofas so we chilled out in the evening and watched movies - Willy Wonker and the chocolate factory and Vanila Sky :o)
Wednesday - The Aussie boys in the hostel had decided to hire a car for a couple of days and head out to explore the surrounding area and coast. They invited Amanda and I to join them so they got the car and we headed out towards the national parks for the day. The road around the parks aren't tarmac and it was raining for most of the day - not the best driving conditions so there were a few dodgey moments - we had to push our little Fiat 'Betsy' up one hill and she was ditched once but she did manage to stay in one piece!! The boys had come prepared with sandwich ingredients so we got a sandwich factory going and had a picnic in the car as it was too wet to get out!!
The National park was beautiful - some really beautiful lakes and amazing Autumn colours.
After the national park, we headed to Valdivia, booked into the Aries Buenos hostel - not the nicest hostel in the world, but OK for a night. Then we headed out to 'Dino's' for dinner before heading to the Kunstman brewery (need to try not to spell that wrong!!). They gave us shot glasses of each of their beers to try and then we ordered a column of the best one. We played some drinking games ....and ordered another column.....oh dear!!
The taxi driver on the way to the brewery had suggested we go to Esmerelda Street after the brewery as there are several pubs and clubs there, so that's what we did. We had some piscolas (pisco is the local liqour - same as Peru) in the bar and played another drinking game before popping into a couple of the other bars in the street to see what they were like - one of them was totally empty so Amanda and Bryn decided to take advantage of the empty dancefloor...
Then we went to another place and had some drinks with the locals, and then we went back to the club downstairs from the first place we'd been too.....from then on everything is a little bit hazy!! Bryn and Amanda went home sometime around 3am and Steve and I sometime later.....
Thursday - Not feeling very well!! We headed out from the hostel at around 11ish and went for breakfast - Bryn ordered the churasco, and the smell of it made me want to be sick - reminding me of the one I had at Osorno bus station!! Then we went to the fishmarket at the waterfront where the sealions and pelicans come to feed off the scraps - it was soo cool - even the most massive sealion managed to heave itself over the railings - although not particularly gracefully!
Then we went to the botanical gardens and had a wander around before heading out to a beach just outside Valdivia. The weather is still pretty rubbish, but we managed a walk along the beach before finding a great seafood restaurant for lunch.
We headed back to Pucon which took around 2hours, checked up on our volcano tour for Friday (80% chance of rain so still not looking hopeful) popped back into the hostel and then drove out to the hot springs at around 10pm. These are the first hot springs I've been to where there's no sulphur in the water, so no chemical smell. There were a few pools - a really hot one and a few cooler ones. When we arrived there were quite a few people there, but by midnight we were just about the only people left there so it was really chilled and relaxing so I managed to shake the last of my hangover!!
Friday - Weather pants, so volcano climb cancelled - boo hissss!! Decided to have a chilled out day and catch up on internet......Cooked dinner and chilled out in front of the TV for a bit before 8 of us from the hostel decided to go check out Pucon's nightlife, we walked into town in the pouring rain and got absolutely soaked and asked the guy in the tour place where was good to go. He told us to go to a bar around the corner where all the girls would get a free pisco sour, so we went. From the outside it looked closed, but we tried the door and entered to find all the bar staff sitting around a table watching 'the great escape' on a big screen!! They looked really shocked to see us, but managed to sort us out a few drinks including our free pisco sours. One of the girls also ordered a mohito, which arrived and was sooooo strong she couldn't drink it. (all of the drinks are incredibly strong here - a vodka and coke is generally around 40% vodka and 60% coke!!) We were the only customers in there the whole time and the staff tried to entice us to stay longer but we decided to leave and look for somewhere with a little more life in it. The Aussie boys refused to leave the table whilst there was still a drink left so we all took a swig of the offending mohito and we left the bar in search of livelier haunts. We ended up in another bar which was quite good fun - the evening ended with everyone dancing and Amanda getting a dancing 'lesson' from an Israeli girl. We managed to find our way home via a burger place at around 5.30am.....
Saturday - Weather still pants so still not able to climb the volcano, just as well really as none of us were in any fit state to climb a stairs let alone a volcano!! Stayed in bed til 2pm, went for a wander to the lake with Amanda, made fahitas for dinner and watched a movie.
Sunday - Hooooooorah!! Climbed the volcano today - too tired to update this properly!!
The day started at 6am, making sandwiches, having breakfast and heading out to the tour place for 7am. The guides were still uncertain whether we would be able to do the climb as the volcano still had a cloud on the top but eventually we got fixed up with all the gear - gaiters, the most uncomfortable hiking boots in the world, waterproof trousers and jacket, helmet, crampons, ice axe, gloves and wooly hat - and drove to the base of the volcano. There is a chair lift up the first part of the volcano which usually cuts out the first 1.5hours of walking, however, on this day it was conveniently closed, so we set out on foot at around 9am. We were walking on a mixture of snow and volcanic rock and as we got a short way up the cloud cleared and we were able to see the top of the volcano for the first time - beautiful!!
The climb was really tough and my boots were digging into my shins with every step, but the view across Pucon and of other volcanos around, the anticipation of getting to the top and seeing the crater and the lava in it made the pain seem worth it. Around half way up, it got really steep and we were walking on snow and ice so we put the crampons on and used the ice axe for stability. I'm not the greatest with heights and a couple of times I looked down and had a little panic, so decided not to do that again!! Then around 1.5hours from the top the weather changed and we started to get blown by fierce winds. I had no face protection so the ice and snow being blown into my face and eyes was soooooo painful I was almost ready to give up and head back down the mountain....but I didn't - I'd waited nearly a week to do this so I was damn well gonna get to the top!! We did eventually make it up there at around 3pm, which was some achievement as out of some 300 people attempting it that day around half didn't make it to the top.
The sight of the crater was really cool and I headed straight into it to find lava, but then made a hasty retreat as I quickly found myself choking and my eyes crying with the fumes being blown around by the wind!! There was no way anyone was getting close enough to it to see lava that day :o( We stayed at the top for long enough to take a few photos and then started our decent. The first bit was soooo steep, if you fell over you had to ram the ice axe into the side of the mountain to stop yourself zoooming down at break-neck speed!! It was really quite scary, especially with the wind still blowing up a blizzard and blinding everyone. At around the halfway point we stopped, took our crampons off and strapped on a piece of something, I'm not really sure how to describe it, kind of really thick, waterproof cloth which strapped around our legs and bums and we slid down the next bit on our bums!!
We reached the bottom by around 5.30pm, exhausted and in pain from the boots - everyone piled into the minibus and went back to Pucon to offload all the gear.
Bryn, Steve and I went out for dinner, then I booked my bus ticket for the next morning, went back to the hostel and had an early night.....
Monday - got 9.15am bus to Santiago
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