Pucon and the Chilean Lake District

Having endured the pains of big bus journeys, Pucon was time for some serious R and R. But what a place to do it in! Stunning scenery, a lake (warm enough to swim in) with a nice beach, and a big, bad volcano looming over the landscape! The town itself reminds me somewhat of Center Parks, all wood buildings and big wide streets. Except Center Parks with a volcano alarm! Which got tested every couple of days, and had an interesting rating system where green actually meant a few things were happening with the volcano (no light was the best!). The main draw of the town is, indeed, climbing said volcano, and my friendly hostel owner was very keen for me to do this (he has scaled it over 1500 times, but since retiring with a hip injury bemoans the fact that he now has a big pot belly), anyhow i signed up to do this 2 days after my arrival.

Now comes the stupid part... me not having done much in the way of exercise, I thought a gentle warm up was in order, so rented a bike for the afternoon. Following a route the rental guys adviced, I quickly became lost and ended up biking through what was, in all effect, sand. Needless to say, climbing a volcano at 5AM the following morning was fairly painful. 1 hour walking on slippy rocks, followed by 3 hours in snow. So, so worth it in the end though because the view was simply stunning... you could see lava rivers from past eruptions, a glacier, and plenty of sulphur churning out the crater (sadly couldn´t see any liquid hot magma). Loads of fun getting back down too, as you pretty much slide on your arse through the snow. Wooohoooooo.

I spent the next 3 days in pucon recovering, and generally chilling out. Not much of interest happened at all really, so I´ll skip to Puerto Varas where... ummm... not much interesting happened at all really! Pretty much the same as Pucon, but a bit smaller and a lot less tourists. So booked a 30 hour bus ride to take me to the end of the world! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I have noticed these blogs have got a lot less interesting since I stopped drinking every night, sorry. I´ll try to get back on the wagon!

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