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Published: March 27th 2006
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The canopy crew
Tomas, Laura, Paco (Mike), me, Jack, Manu, Kelsey I climbed a volcano!
First I must say it´s amazing how much you can get out of a 3 day weekend! On Thursday night, Laura, Paco and I got on a bus to Pucon, 10 hours or so south of Santiago, our only plans being to climb this volcano,
Volcan Villarica. Kelsey, Jack, Thomas and Manu were leaving at the same time too, and while we were confident that our bus would win the race down, they beat us by a good half an hour. Anyway, while waiting at the bus stop, this random guy Scott came up to us and started telling us about all these deals he knew about and all these great places to go to in Chile.. right before we got on the bus he handed us a flyer for a hostel in Pucon for only $8 a person per night. he said he would call his friend, who owned it, and have him pick us up when we arrived in Pucon in the morning. We couldn´t decide if this was something we should be concerned about, and when we got to Pucon we set off looking for the hostel, wandering these random cute little streets.
Canopying
Kelsey, Thomas and me It´s a complete turist, rustic-y little town. Wouldn´t you know, before long a white van pulled over with this white guy from Zimbabwe and his Chilean wife- they were from the hostel and were looking for us! We got in, and it actually all ended up working out really well, with minimal sketchy-ness involved. The hostel was great and served us tea, although it was a bit out of the center of town.
ANYway, Friday afternoon we walked around a lot, checked out the Lake Villarica, artesania, and a cheap lunch. I finally got to see one of Chile´s lakes! That night we joined up with Kelsey, Jack, Thomas and Manu to go canopying- where you get all harnessed up and go swinging through the trees! It was really fun and really easy, a great pre-hiking-volcano activity. Our guides were fun too and we wound up hanging out with them Sat. night for awhile (even though i was realllly tired). We ate dinner at this great hole-in-the-wall place, for empanadas (baked break filled with meat, onions, herbs etc, a classic chilean meal) and churrascos (amaaazing sandwiches of beef, avocado, tomato, served everywhere) for a buck. Hit up the grocery
store for breakfast the next day and food for the volcano, crashed at 10pm to be able to get up the next day at 3am!!
We decided we wanted to start early, to be able to climb without a lot of people and to climb with the sunrise. The 7 of us met our guides at 4am to pack up and get ready, and began the hike up at 5am, in the pitch black with little head lights on, several layers, and our packs on our back. We were the first group to hit the mountain! The first hour or so was all rocks and ashy gravel, zigzagging up in the dark and taking periodic breaks when our guides would stop. At first our view of course was just the lights from Pucon and Villarica, 2 towns by the mountain, and the smoke coming from the top of the volcano. As the sun began to rise, the colors were amazing oranges, yellows and pinks. The moment with the sun finally came over the mountain, as we were hiking, was great. Around 7am we strapped cramp-ons on our feet, claws for our shoes basically, for walking through the snow and
ice. The next few hours were good but challenging for me, nearly constant hiking up through the snow, and I had to start taking more frequent breaks. At 9:45am, 4 and a half hours after we started, we reached the top and it was an amazing feeling. Well the feeling of realizing how out of shape I was wasn´t so amazing but actually getting to the top was great! We couldn´t see lava, but plenty of smoke billowing out, and needless to say the view was great. I promised myself I´d get my camera fixed this week. The sulfur smell at times burned the lungs if you didn´t cover your mouth... again, it just felt good to have made it. And eat lunch!
The BEST part though, which for me made any of the pain of hiking up worthwhile, was going down- We put on special pants and put our ice axes to work, toboganning down nearly the entire volcano!!! Our guide would go first and we´d follow individually, down paths and curves and bumps, flying down the down on our butts using the end of our pick ax to brake... although some caught on quicker than others and
watching everyone go down was almost as entertaining as flying down myself. Our guide had to tackle ppl flying by at some points so that they´d stop! haha. No it was fantastic and my arms and shoulders are actually the most sore of all, from digging in the pick ax down the entire mountain. Sigh... so fun! We got down around 1 or 1:30pm. Weird to think we had already climbed up a volcano and back.
The rest of the day/night was fun too, we prob. would´ve crashed relatively early except Laura called our canopy guides up and we all went down to the beach to hang out. It was fun (though cooold) though by 2am I was ready to crash! Anway, it was a long, fun, and very rewarding day. One of the hardest things I´ve done in a long time and it was most definitely worth it.
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