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Published: April 10th 2009
We survived our 30 hour bus ride from El Calafate to Bariloche. We watched about six movies and kept getting up to stretch. With two hours left in the bus ride, I started getting pretty restless, but we made it through! My legs had a hard time working, but we survived!
Bariloche is a cute little ski type town on the edge the Andes, surrounded by lakes and mountains. The name Bariloche comes from the Mapudungun word Vuriloche meaning "people from behind the mountain.¨ We had planned to do some hiking in the nearby national park and do some horseback riding, but we arrived to rain, rain and more rain! We spent a few days hanging out there waiting for the rain to clear, but it never happened. When the rain did stop for a while we managed to walk around the town and see the cute buildings, the old cathedral, and the lake. The town is filled with chocolate shops and we pretty much spent the entire time there eating chocolate and ice cream. I even found flan and tiramisu ice cream. It was probably the best ice cream ever... well maybe minus gelato in Italy, but what can
really compete with that?
So after a few days of getting fat on chocolate and ice cream, putting up with rude people in our hostel, and watching way too much TV, we decided to leave Bariloche for Chile, to hopefully find better weather. We left Bariloche at 7am on a bus to Osorno. This was the main transport hub for buses elsewhere in Chile when people come in from Argentina. We made it though the border crossing but got our meat and cheese taken away. There went our lunch! Luckily, we had enough crackers and chips to hold us over. We were planning on catching a 2pm bus from Osorno to Pucon in Chile, but when we arrived in Osorno at 11am, we found out the 2pm bus was full and we would have to wait until 6:45pm for the next bus. That meant eight hours of entertaining ourselves in a bus station. You’d think we would be used to this by now, but I don’t think I will ever get used to killing that much time while watching all my worldly possessions carefully and eating only crackers and water. Once again, we survived and got on the bus
at 6:45 (nearly 12 hours after we started traveling that day) and arrived in Pucon around midnight. It was still cold and rainy and we got a little lost looking for our hostel, but we survived.
The next morning, we decided to sleep in and take it easy. We stayed at this small hostel where we were the only guests- not kidding (I guess this is what happens in the low season), so when we woke up our places were all set for breakfast and we never had to fight with other guests to use the free internet. The owners were super nice, minus when they were watching something on TV and you had to awkwardly ask if you could change it to something in English, but we loved it. The three of us had a six bed dorm room all to ourselves! So we spent that day exploring the town and trying to stay out of the rain. Even though the weather wasn’t perfect, we knew this city was going to be gorgeous.
Pucón has an amazing location by a lake and a volcano and quite stable weather, kind of like southern California! It offers a variety
of sports and adventure activities for tourists, including water skiing, snow skiing, backpacking, white water rafting and kayaking, horse back riding, natural hot springs, zip line rides, and guided ascents of Villarrica volcano. This place seriously has it all! So after taking it easy the first day, we decided to get in to some of the action.
We decided to head about a half hour outside of the city to do some horseback riding and thermal pools. Finally, I got to do the horseback riding I had wanted to do in the past few cities. I’m so glad I saved it for Pucon because the weather was wonderful and I was not freezing like every other city we have been in recently.
We entered the stable with a few guys from Colombia who were on our same tour and found out that our guide for the horseback ride didn’t speak English... we’ve dealt with this before, but it is never fun using sign language to communicate! He started giving everyone their horses and I got the very last one... the smallest horse in the stable. This horse was smaller than I was! Of course, everyone laughed at my
mucho piqueno horse and I nicknamed her ¨mini¨ but I knew we were still going to have a good time. Of course, mini was the best horse I could get. I think because she was so small she had something to prove so immediately she headed toward the front of the group! I didn’t even have to give her a kick or anything. She was the leader of the pack. The entire day she listened to everything I told her, she galloped, she stopped, she turned, she drank, and she was awesome! The ride took us through some back parts of Pucon, near small farms and finally to a lookout point where we could see over the entire valley. Since Chile has over 200 volcanoes in this area there were plenty of volcanoes to see. The main one was Volcan Llaima which erupted the day before we arrived in Pucon. It was still over 30 miles away, but it is the closest I have ever been to an exploding volcano. Unfortunately, we did not get to see any lava or any explosions. Llaima is one of the largest and most active volcanoes in all of Chile, which says a lot
in this land of volcanoes.
After a few minutes at the lookout point we began heading back to the stable. The Colombian guys started getting comfortable on their horses and one of them was crazy. He was standing on his horse, sitting backwards, jumping on and off, picking random fruit from the surrounding bushes and trying to flirt with another girl on our trip. It made everything quite interesting. The road down was pretty rocky and full of gravel. The horses were not able to totally keep their grip. At one point, Jeff's horse was sliding into Chris' horse and I thought for sure everyone was going down and the horses were going to break their legs and we were going to see the guide euthanize them right there! One of the Colombian guys, who was a big guy on a little horse, was scared to death that his horse was going to fall and he was saying some not so nice words in more than one language! Of course, mini made it through without too much trouble, but that's because she was a trooper! On the way down, we took the horses to a lake for some water.
Since mini was so small she dove right into the lake and soaked the bottom of my pants and then decided she wasn't going to drink. I guess "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink!"
Once we finished our horseback ride, we headed to the hot springs. Half the place was under construction and there were only four pools available for us, unless you count the mud pool that was full of bugs and mosquitoes. Plus, the hot springs were more like "luke warm" springs because they were not all that hot! Oh well... at least it was nice to sit in somewhat warm water after our booties hurt from riding horses all day. We were a bit disappointed with the hot springs, but oh well... it was still nice enough.
The next day we had plans to ride bikes around the town, but due to the loss of feeling in our butts because of the horseback riding, we decided against it. We just relaxed around the town instead and lounged in our hostel because the following day was going to be our big activity day.
Everyone comes to Pucon to
Me by the lake
The one time it stopped raininghike Volcan Villarrica. It is 2,847 meters (9,340 feet) high and goes straight up! Snow-covered Villarrica is one of Chile's most active volcanoes. Villarrica is one of only four volcanoes worldwide known to have an active lava lake within its crater. In 1964 Villarrica had a strombolian eruption that caused lahar flows. The lahar destroyed a settlement on the shores of Calafquén Lake, Coñaripe, which was later reconstructed further east. However, since then there has not been an eruption that has damaged the nearby towns. The upper part of Villarrica's cone is permanently covered by snow and has also some glaciers.
I'm not sure why we decided to hike it, but we did and it definitively kicked my butt. We met at 7am for the hike and took the drive to the volcano's base. From there we had the choice to take a ski lift the first 400 meters or hike it. Of course, we decided to hike it, mostly because we didn't want to pay the extra money. By the end of that first 400 meters, I knew this was going to be a long day. I was huffing and puffing and generally hating life when we reached
the end of that first part. Then our guides informed us that we had finished 400 meters and still had 1,400 to go. After another hour of straight uphill climbing, we stopped for a short break and to put our crampons on. The rest of the hike would be on the glaciers that cover the top of the volcano. Since we had hiked glaciers before, I thought the worst part was behind me and began to get excited. Little did I know the worst was still to come...
Once we began the ascent to the top on the glacier, the surrounding became straight up and down. We would hike from side to side because it was impossible to hike straight up due to the steepness. All the other groups seemed to be going at a relatively slow pace and stopping every once and a while for short breaks, but not our group. Our guides were just plowing away walking straight up the hill. I could not keep up. I fell behind, like I hate to do, but I could not help it! My legs were burning and I just couldn't walk as fast as everyone else. One of the
guides stayed back with me while I pushed on. I kept walking four feet and stopping and then another four feet and stopping. There were times I couldn't breathe and I didn't think I could make my legs take one more step. It was the most physically demanding thing I have ever done. I have never done something where I thought I was reaching my physical limits, but I definitely thought I was in over my head this time. I wanted to quit like 50 times, but I kept going. I hated that my group was so far in front of me, but I just couldn't go any faster. By the time I was almost the top the guide had to push me telling me "only two more minutes... last push." She was nice and patient with me, but I still felt like an idiot for not being able to do it better. When I finally reached the top, my legs were on fire and I collapsed. I didn't even have the energy to go look at the volcano caldera or to even look around at the view. I was dead. After a few minutes I got up and checked
out the sights, but my legs felt like Jell-O and I could barely walk. The sights were pretty amazing when I took them in, but I still cannot believe I was able to fake a smile for the photos! Five hours of straight uphill climbing was too much for me to handle and I was so happy to be at the top!
But... I still had to go down! Luckily, when we booked they said we were able to slide a lot of the way down. Unfortunately, the gods did not like me and the glacier was too slippery to slide down so we had to walk the whole way. Slipping and sliding down snow and ice and then dirt and gravel. I only fell a few times, but I thought that was a good attempt since I could barely feel my legs!
We got back to the hostel and collapsed on the couches. We were full of sweat and dirt, but I didn't even have the energy to get into the shower for a while. My legs were hurting so bad and I couldn't make them stop. Finally I took some Aleve and it helped, but I
was so sore!
We met some other people from our hike for dinner that night and shared our stories of pain. I told them how all the other groups stopped for breaks except for ours. Since I was behind I had more perspective on the other groups. Apparently they asked our guide to slow down and he said he was going slow and didn't stop. I'm pretty happy at that point I just decided to take it at my own pace and not try to keep up! I still finished before a lot of other groups, I was just the slow poke for my group. This has definitely scared me for our 3 day Inca trail in Peru and I definitely know that I will NEVER climb Mt. Everest like we all though we could! Oh well... I survived one mountain and can say I did it!
The next day we relaxed around town and did nothing, trying to relax our legs. Then it was another wonderful overnight bus to Santiago!
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Courtney Enriquez
non-member comment
Hot Dog
Now is that sour cream or mayo on your hot dog?!? Livin the healthy life I see :o) Ha ha ha ha. Keep enjoying your travels... stay safe! Court ;O)