Ali versus the Volcano

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Picture the scene... Its 4am. I'm asleep, obviously. As is Sophie. Piercing through the veil of blackness comes a noise, much like an air raid siren. "Aaaweeeeeee.... aaaweeeeeee". "What's that?" asks Sophie, already knowing the answer. "I think thats the volcano alert" I reply nervously. More on that in a bit.....

And so we arrived in the Lake District. No, not the land of flat caps, whippets and pot roasts (which I'm sure is very nice), but the beautiful region that spans Chile and Argentina taking in the Andes in between. I don't mind admitting I've been looking forward to this bit. It has not disappointed.

Our first stop in the Lake District was Pucon, on the Chilean side. The Lonely Planet downplayed it: always a good sign. Its a lovely little town on the edge of Lake Villarica, full of wooden chalet-type buildings. The scenery of tree-lined mountains and blue lakes was topped only by the unmissable presence of the snow covered Volcano Villarica that sits above town. Really, this place is just showboating. Everywhere you look, you're bedazzled by colour. Green mountainsides, white snow, blue lakes, even bluer skies. Its like the world is in Technicolour.

Back to the volcano. It really does dominate the town. Its active by the way. The last eruption was back in 1984. It erupts approximately every 20 years apparently. You don't have to be a mathematician to work out its overdue a big one. The fact that its constantly spewing out small amounts of smoke and lava is a good thing; the pressure doesn't build up too much. Those in the know seem fairly relaxed. Nevertheless, volcanology is not an exact science. They have, after all, got it spectacularly wrong before.

There are posters around town displaying a traffic light system for the danger levels. The traffic lights are situated above the town hall. Green is obviously good. Orange (increased seismic activity and voluminous clouds of smoke amongst other things) and its time to get on the first bus out of town. Red..... well, you aren't really going to know much about it. Anyway, as I had nothing better to do, I thought I'd better climb the volcano.

This is where the 4am wake up call comes in. I should point out that we had been marvelling at the increased red glow coming from the volcano the previous evening so when the volcano siren went off, our imaginations were primed and ready to erupt (pun intended). I was bricking it, I don't mind telling you. The siren stopped after a couple of "aaaaweeeeeee"s and I was paused, waiting for screaming residents to rush from their houses. After about 10 minutes my pulse slowed and, due to the fact I really had no idea what to do (and there were no screaming residents evident), decided to go back to bed. As I found out later, it turns out that they also use the siren to call the town's volunteer fire service. It might have been helpfull to put THAT on the poster, but maybe they like having a bit of fun with the tourists. Two rings apparently for the fire service. Indefinite rings and the lights on the town hall have gone to red (and a molten ash cloud is travelling towards you much faster than you can run).

The volcano climb is the major draw in the area. Having done it, I can see why. The volcano is a perfect cone shape and covered in snow all year round. All in all, a great sight. Its about 2800m high and you start at about 500m so its a reasonable hike. It wasn't too difficult but the slopes were steep in places and the snow quite soft. We got to the top after about 4 hours of steady trudging and the views of the lake district were spectacular. You could also look down inside the mouth of the volcano. You couldn't quite see the pool of lava inside the volcano mouth but you could definitely hear it churning around in there. Every now and then when it got particularly angry, it sprayed bright red lava up the sides of the mouth. The highlight of the trip was coming back down when you get to basically sit down and slide down the side of the volcano with only an ice axe to stop you. Not the safest piece of braking equipment but as it was all you had you soon got used to it. You actually picked up quite a speed at times and it was difficult if not impossible to slow down in some sections. Like the canopy tour I did in the jungle, you often have the most fun when you are a little bit scared.

The one (very minor) grumble about the volcano climb was the fact that the guides were less than useless. You aren't allowed to make your own way up there so you have to pay a reasonable sum to go with a guided group. The guides however, seemed only interested in chatting up the female members of the group. They didn't offer one useful fact about the volcano. One of them managed to tell us a story about himself; something about how he beat some marines to the top one time. Tosser. I'd have pushed him in if there weren't any witnesses. I mean, being a volcano guide is a fairly cool job but it is, after all, a hike that me and loads of other tourists do every day. The way they strutted around, you'd think they climb Everest in their spare time. As I said, minor grumble. It was a great day.

We had a fun time in Pucon, all in all. We hired bikes another day and rode around some pretty bumpy side roads. Once again, beautiful scenery. I'd like to say something different but to be honest, its one gorgeous view after another here. The hostel we were staying at was lovely as well, very chilled out and the people really friendly. I was quite sad to leave Pucon but, well, there are other nice places to visit after all.

Next stop: Argentina. The drive to the border was pleasant in itself: more volcanoes and lakes along the way. Argentina wins the award for the most incompetent border system in South America. It may be premature as we still have a couple of countries to go but they will be hard pushed to beat the hour wait we had getting across here. Instead of the usual queue system employed so successfully elsewhere, the Argies have decided that they know best and everyone crowds around in a room waiting for their name to be called. The problem with this? They can't pronounce European names and we can't understand what the hell they are saying. "Aleeeshtayr Shtooowaaart". Did they just call me or the equally perplexed Russian stood next to me? We therefore had to put up with an infuriating game of chinese whispers before each person was seen. But, hey, we're on holiday so it doesn't really matter.

Passports eventually stamped, we arrived in San Martin de los Andes which was... almost exactly like Pucon. Not that it was a bad thing. A little bigger and no volcano but there were lakes, mountains and little gingerbread houses everywhere. The food in Argentina has a big reputation, especially for steak and chocolate. I've tried both and can report that they have a well-deserved reputation. The food is pretty damn cheap as well so I may live off beef for the next few weeks. Don't be suprised if I come back with gout. They also have this stuff called dolce a leche, which is far as I can tell, is made in heaven. Its a sort of caramelly-type goo that the argies seem to spread on anything. Fantastic stuff.

We were only in San Martin for a couple of nights so, aside from gorging ourselves, we only had time to fit in a hike around the lake. Beautiful scenery. Lakes. Mountains. Blah, blah. Change the record, eh? Its difficult. Its a beautiful part of the world and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Next stop was Bariloche. Same scenery, different lake. In fact, we passed another 9 lakes on the drive down so we are pretty much on lake overload at the moment. There are worse problems though. Its not as though I'm hankering for a grey, pollution filled city. Bariloche is a nice little town. Very much a touristy place but it doesn't seem to detract from it. Just a nice place to chill for a few days. In fact, it possibly offered the best blue-lake, sno-capped-mountain scenery of the lot so far. We did another hike to check out the views and yesterday we went horseriding which was good fun. The good point about horseriding, as far as I can see, is that he/she does all the work and you are free just to check out the scenery.

We also met up with our mate Stu again and went the the best steakhouse in town for a little treat. Well, I could try to describe how succulent and tasty this steak was but I would not be doing it justice. My mouth is watering just writing this. Bariloche is also the "Chocolate Capital" with numerous stores, big and small, selling all manner of chocolate items. One store was enormous - a bit Willy Wonkaesque. We did a bit of a chocolate crawl, picking up free samples as we went.

I think we are going to appreciate our chilled out time by lakes as we have decided to try to catch a 4 day ferry up from the bottom of Chile leaving in 5 days. It looks great fun. The catch? We have several thousand kilometres (and a few destinations to hit) before we get there. We can just about do it but we'll be flying by the seat of our pants for the next few days. Wish us luck....

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