Advertisement
Published: March 25th 2009
So chicos,
After the craic of paddies day it was time to move on. The 2 of us and some other´s we met in bariloche got ticket to go back into chile.We were heading for a place called Pucon where we were told it is possible to climb an active volcano ´Villarica´.
Pucon itself is a beautiful little town just over the argentine border. It is surrounded by the andes and has a beautiful lake which it nice to swim in if a little cold.But seen as its around 27 degrees every day its a nice way to cool down.The first hostel we stayed in was sweet with just us in it and a garden to drink in in the sun.But after just 2 days 3 french and a baby moved in,you heard right ,a f**ken baby,so needless to say we moved out pretty rapid.
After that scare we found ourselves a nice new hostel with no demon children in it and decided to see what the town had to offer.We decided to leave the volcano for a day or two till we could find out a bit about it,so we booked ourselves in to do more white
Villarica Vocano
The Challenge is setwater rafting followed by the volcano the next day.Now we had done some rafting in bariloche last week and were told that the river was a grade 4 and were a little let down when we found out on the river it was actually a grade 3,so we didn´t hope for much when we were told the same here.It was only 20 euro to do it here so we thought it would be good fun anyway.As it turned out it was a 4 and was brilliant.We went over waterfalls and everything.There was even a part that was too rough and we all had to get out of the raft and the guide had to let the raft go dowm on a rope.We on the other hand had to walk down the river bank for about 100 meters then cimb over big rocks only to be met with a 15 feet jump back into the water to get back to the raft.Being the scaredy cat i am i jumped first. It was great craic ,much higher than the 40 foot.Then everyone else jumped leaving only Ms brady up on the rock with the safety kayaker.I must admit i thought we might
Volcano alert
Stay on greeen,stay on greeen! have a problem but to be fair to her and to my suprise she jumped!!Like the true action girl she has become.So all in all it was a great day´s rafting and a third of the price of argentina.
Next day we had to get up at 4:30 to climb the volcano.4:30!.The night before we were fitted with crampons
and other gear as the top of it is covered in ice. We met at 5am and set off in a bus to the bottom. The volcano is 2487 meters high and I can tell you we felt every one of them. You leave that early so as not to be climbing in the mid-day sun. It takes about 5 hours to get up and is about half ice half cooled lava. It´s last major erruption was in1984.When we got to the top I must admit it was pretty humbling. We were standing on the edge of the crater looking in and there was smoke coming out and the noise was so immense, coming from the centre of the earth, just mad. There was another reason to climb the volcano aswell. We were told that you got with Sorcha & Damien
setting out at 5:30am to slide back down all the ice on your arse. There are grooves all through the ice which have been made into slides. And the gear we were fitted with the day before included the most flattering kevlar adult nappy ever seen. We all had great fun and it was really weird to think we were sliding down a volcano on our arses, but there you go. It took only 2 hours to get back down!
So now we must leave pucon and on to our next stop. We decided we are going to the beach to chill out for a week after all our xtreme sports,a sleepy little seaside town called pichilemu.
till then me amigo
haste leugo
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0552s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Gooch
non-member comment
Get your crampon
I'm sure I've siad this in every comment - but that looks f888888 deadly!! And all that safety apparell - its like my bestest day out! My Paddy's Day over here was at the Senior Cup Final -- you know loike, so I down a few Heinos with the boys! Me and R are doing the Ring of Kerry at Easter - cheapy Supervalu break - any recommendations...do you have the number of your psycho Eastern European 'taxi'?