Climbing Volcan Villarrica.

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I am now in the little town on Pucon in Chile. The main attraction here is the Villarica Volcano, a perfect cylindrical volcano like Mt Fuji in Japan. For some silly reason, we climbed it yesterday, but it was fantastic!

We were supposed to go the day before but got up for the 8am start (almost killed me!) only to get there and be told by our guide that it was too cloudy and dangerous so we had to put the trip off until the next day!
Yesterday started off REALLY windy, so our guide didn't decide until 11am we could go. Were supposed to set off walking at 9am, but didn´t set off until 12.30, which meant we had major time constraints. Therefore, we were dragged up at the speed of lightening. Or group had 10 people, and we all fell into place in a kind of unofficial order right from the start. Poor Ursula was at the end and couldn´t keep up so kept getting frustrated when we waited for a break, then carried on as soon as she caught up!
I
had been worried it would be really cold, but it was actually quite warm walking. It was a little scary when we had to walk across ice fields using an ice pick, and our guide told us how to use it in case we fell in order to save our life-eeek! Ken had his walkman on for some of it but decided against it when everyone screamed a warning to each other, which of course he didn't hear, so looked up the ice field to see a huge boulder tumbling towards him!! Just managed to get out of the way!

After 5 hours of steady climbing we finally mage it to the summit crater - hooray! The volcano is still active to we were knocked back by sulphurous fumes when we peered down deep into the crater into the depths of the earth and could see red lava - it made it all worth while.

The best bit by far was coming down. There are tracks in the ice (like for toboggans) and we were all handed waterproof trousers with padded bottoms to that we could slide at high speed practically all the way down! It was so much fun! What took 5 hours to slog up, took only 1 hour 15 to slide down!! By the time we reached the van at the bottom the sun was setting, and everything was perfect!

We ended up later going out with the people from our hike group for some well-earned beers! Wanted to visit a hot spring (onsen for those of you in Japan!!) but it was unfortunately a little late.

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Photos

Volcan Vilarrica
Our goal? The summit!!