Blogs from Pucón, Araucanía, Chile, South America - page 16

So sorry about the delay, friends. Here is the last Chile entry of our trip. Better late than never... My parents have raved about Chile for almost a decade. For years they shared stories about the friendly people, seafood, and the ever-popular... pisco sours. They first fell in love with the country when they started their Rotaplast International volunteer surgeries in South America operating in Valdivia. They are part of the reason Trevor and I knew we had to spend time in Chile during our Latin adventure, and after years of hearing about all that we were missing, meeting them there was the perfect end to our trip. We are proud and impressed that my Dad made not one, but two appearances on our eight-month honeymoon. He wins our award for MVT (most valuable traveler). When ... read more

Puerto Natales - Puerto Montt Following my trekking in Torres Del Paine, i thought it was time to put my feet up and take it easy for a few days. Luckily, there is a very convenient way to do this from Puerto Natales travelling North, by spending 4 days on a ferry. A company called Navimag run the route and it travels through the Fjordes of Western Chile, on its way gradually towards Puerto Montt, 1,460km to the North. The boat is essentially a converted freight ferry, which now takes up to 200, mostly backpackers, on the route each week. In order to make the trip a little more exciting, they arrange talks and show movies through the trip to try and keep peoples interest alive. I have to admit it was the first time this ... read more

Hello from the Lake District. It is beautiful. Very like the lake district or Wales at home. We are staying on a beautiful farm and having homemade meals and homemade bread, jam and cheese for breakfast. The family are lovely too. So we are back on the activities...first day was great we walked along the road to some hot springs as it was a little overcast then decided to walk the cross country way back as the sun had come out. So we walk through beautiful countryside for about 2 hours until we come to the river and we remember that the lady told us that the boat to cross the river was not working.....we could see it on the otherside. Dean strips off to his boxers and decides to brave the river..it was baltic. He ... read more

After partying until 8am on New Years in Viña del Mar, we got some much needed rest on a 14 hour bus ride to Pucon, Chile. This bus ride was more interesting than your average ride because about 8 hours into it, I noticed a funny shaped cloud that I soon realized wasn't a cloud at all, but rather smoke, coming out of a volcano, Volcan Llaima, about 20 miles away from Pucon. We were incredibly lucky to see this; the volcano hadn't erupted in 50 years. It really erupted too. Following the mushroom cloud of smoke, lava started shooting hundreds of feet in the air. Crazy. We'll probably never see anything like that ever again Although we didn´t know a whole lot about Pucon specifically, we did know that things were about to change: after ... read more

The adventure continues. So as you might have heard, on our way back from El Quisco, I started to think that it might be a little hard to get to Pucon if we stayed in Isla Negra for the night. The first buses did not leave until 10:00 am. 900 km takes a while on a bus. Plus you must understand that because Chile is “shaped like a string bean” the buses most often travel at night (at least the really comfortable buses). So this looked like a really good plan, get to Santiago at about 9:30 and take the next bus heading south. Now that would mean missing the fireworks in El Quisco, but what the hey, seen one fire work you seen ‘em all, so it was a sacrifice we were willing to make. ... read more