The Pachama Backpacker Bus: From Santiago to Puerto Montt

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In Santiago I found out about the Pachama (mother earth) backpacker bus, which covered quite a few of the highlights on the route south and seemed like a nice alternative to the local busses.

Ollie, my new partner in crime, and I joined the bus, the first destination beeing Pomaire, a small coastal town with black-sanded beach. Unfortunately the weather wasn't playing along, so after walking around the town for a while we were confined to the hostel playing cards. Later on we were treated to a spectacular sunset though...

We spent the whole of the next day in the bus, heading to Pucon a really rustic little town, with wooden houses, a big lake and an active, snow-capped Villarrica Volcano we planned to conquer. These plans didn't work out the next day, as once again the weather was bad, so as an alternative we decided to do some canopying, ziplining through the tree's. It was great fun. In the eveneing our group headed to some hotsprings about 40 minutes outside Pucon, and hot these springs were! After a great evening relaxing in the springs, and taking an occasional dip in the freezing river running next to them, we headed back to Pucon for a good nights sleep.

Since all of the people on the bus really wanted to climb the volcano (on a good day you can actually see lava in the crater), we decided to stay in Pucon one more day to give it a shot, and on our second day in Pucon the skies were clear and we got the green light from the tour operator to climb the volcano. After being issued waterproof boots & clothing, crampons and ice-axes we started the ascent, trudging up steep, icy slopes.. After about 3 hours of hiking, just over half-way up the mountain, the winds started picking up and the weather turned on us. We had to turn back, as conditions were too dangerous to continue, and we wouldn't be able to see anything at the top anyway. It was dissapointing that we couldn't make it to the crater, though going down was great fun. Basically we just sat down and slid down the snow on our bum!

As we had spent an extra day in Pucon, we had to drive through the beautiful lake district without any stops in order to make our next stop, Valdivia. Valdivia is a beautiful little town, located between to river, and its main attracion beeing the sea lions that lounge at the river front.

Our last day on the Pachama bus took us to Puerto Montt, where after a great seafood lunch Ollie and I said our good-byes to the rest of the group before boarding the Navimag ferry, which was to take us to Puerto Natales...

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Comments

[Enzo Paci]

Love your pictures
Good pictures guys Greetings from Santiago Enzo www.pachamamabybus.com