Sunshine, adventure and windy weather

---

Crossing the boarder from Bolivia into Chile was one of the most thorough and official border crossing experienced in South America. Driving into the Atacama desert, north of Chile, officials stripped searched all buses, cars, trucks etc. All passengers needed to off load their backpacks and unzip all pockets for thorough manual screening. Instead of being questioned for food or drugs it went more like "you have drugs..", "you have food si.." Immigration took about an hour and half, apparently there´s some sort of strike going on so a few people were just standing around looking pretty.

San Pedro of the Atacama is the only town in the desert, a common route from the Salt Flats is to enter Chile via San Pedro. The town has a whopping population of 3000 with more backpackers roaming the streets than locals. Most people only stay a night or 2 given the prices of this town are easily comparitive to London, extortionary for a South American desert town.

After the WMDR bike ride l was really looking for some more adventure, so a change of itinerary was put in place, it was off to the lake district south of Chile and Argentina. A quick bus journey from San Pedro to Calama, a cheeky flight to Santiago and a 10hr bus ride later saw us in South Americas Lakes District and adventure playground.

Finally some gorgeous blue skies upon arriving into Pucon, south of Chile. A small town that accommodates for every adventure activity you can possible imagine, summer and winter. Wooden town houses, big mountains, friendly locals, one main street with everything on it and a massive active Volcano completely snowed over in the background. This place was nice, just what we needed.

Without any delay we arrived at 7:30am, checked into our lodge style accommodation and booked our tours for the next 2 days. Volcano Villarrica climbing was a must, as we´d missed the boat that morning we booked it the for the following day - if the weather the following day was going to be anything like the day we arrived it was going to be perfect. On the cards for today was Canopying. Swinging across total of 3km of wire (cut up into 6 different paths) over the district whilst 150m in the air. It was great fun. All very scary at first but by the 3rd swing everyone was definately getting used to dangling in mid air and in between trees.

The hype to climb the volcano was big, we were so excited particularly as we could see how beautiful it looked from our bedroom window. The next morning we woke up to clouds, overcast weather and a lot of wind. The climb still got the go ahead even in the bad weather conditions. 3.5hrs of min 50km p/h winds with 0 visibility sums up the weather conditions of our climb of Volcano Villarrica. With our foot clamps on and not nearly enough clothes to keep warm l was literally falling over in the winds trying to climb, the winds were so strong and unfortuantley we didn´t get to see any views. But we reached the top of the volcano which was still quite a thrilling achievment, even in the worst conditions Pucon has ever seen. The way down was much easier and a lot more fun as we all slidded down on our backsides some went in pairs, some were pulled along coz they couldn´t see where they were going and some just found it easier than walking/falling down in slushy snow.

The next day it was goodbye to lovely Pucon, and you´d never guess what the weather was like....yep, clear blue skies with minimum winds. So we left Pucon with completely wind chapped faces (my face felt like leather for the next 3 days, now l know why Cher finds it difficult to smile!), and it was off to Bariloche, Argentina for more adventure and beautiful scenery.

---

Photos

Canopy
weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Volcano Villarrica
View from Pucon

Ski lift on Volcano Villarrica
A quick ski lift saves you an hr of walking to begin the climb.

Top of Volcano Villarrica..
..finding it difficult to smile as a result of the wind.

Comments

[Jo Q]

Gorgeous
Hey babes - looks stunning. Love the pic of walnuts!