I am falling behind in keeping this blog up to date. Sorry.
Pucon follows the tradition of German influences like a copy of the Bierfest that we missed by less than two weeks. Or roads named “Holzapfel”.
After we arrived in the hostel after six hours bus ride from Puerto Varas, I had some slight problems getting Axel to commit on walking up the active volcano Villarrica. It was perfect weather, but according to the forecast, it would only stay like this one or two more days. I was getting very nervous. I wanted to book for the next day. I also wanted to book for the early morning 4am tour that had been described on several websites. After checking out several companies across town we found out that they had stopped doing the early tours last year (I was on the verge of going insane when asking the people (in Spanish) “Do you have a tour starting at four o’clock in the morning?” and getting this answer “Yes, there is space for four people tomorrow. It starts at 7am.”). We picked a tour company slightly more expensive than the one offered from the hostel (Axel was convinced by then and I was almost relaxed again). We chose wisely as we only were a party of five compared to twenty or more people with the other companies.
So we started at 7am, packed with lots of cool gear and equipment (most of the other companies didn’t provide crampons which is a bit stupid as 2/3rd of the track was covered with ice). We were among the first at the ski-lift station and we cheated by taking it up for another 400m of elevation (we could have easily walked up — the Finnish guy who didn’t take the lift caught up on us again before the first break). The pace was good and not exhausting at all. We reached the rim of the crater as the second group.
The view was spectacular. The smell, too. Whenever the wind blew the fumes from the crater into our direction, we immediately started coughing as the sulfidic air turned into acid in our respiratory systems. As soon as possible we escaped back to the outer rim where a vent of fresh air came up, not stopping coughing for quite a while.
While Lothar could watch lava being ejected sky high a few years back this time the Villarrica was pretty calm. Like smoking a cigarette after having good sex. It didn’t blow up and neither we had to sacrifice a virgin (where to get one?) to calm it down again. But from the top you could clearly see the path of the lava flows from the last big erruptions more little as 20 years back. In fact, the next erruption is overdue by a couple of years now.
The best part was sliding down the icy slopes. We put on extra layers to protect ourselves from the ice and sled down on our bums only using our ice axe as a brake. Wooooohh… so much fun really. And our knees were very grateful for that shortcut, too. The running down the dusty gravel was not as hard though but wearing these new boots, every step hurt as my toes banged the tip of the boot going down. I really hoped my toe nails would survive this as they didn’t when I went down 3000m elevation on Kilimanjaro in one day. But all was fine in the end. The dust struck our face and the sweat made it stick. There’s a nice photo of Axel looking almost like a mine worker.
That evening there was also a BBQ at the hostel in which we participated. I need to mention that the white trash girls from Bariloche turned up in the same hostel as us again. But this time, they were able to TALK to us, imagine that! The meat was great, there was plenty of beer and wine. In fact, too much wine. I went to bed feeling alright. Turns out I wasn’t — or at least my body thought otherwise. I won’t go into the embarrassing details but I took the name of the town “Pucon” too literarily.
The next morning I was pretty much disabled until 2pm, when we booked for something called “Hydrospeed”. That’s putting on a wetsuit and going down a river with rapids on a polystyrene / foam board. Most of the time, it wasn’t that exciting but some of the rapids made up for the missing thrill. And you didn’t need to bring drinking water as you drank enough of the ice cold water involuntarily. Crashing against rocks with your knees in the shallow water was not so much fun either but at least I was used to swim with flippers due to my diving experience. Although it was damn exhausting this time. Axel (and a few others) really had problems keeping up with group.
When we returned to the shore and took off the suit I was baffled how cold the water really was. I took a very quick dip and then… we waited… and waited… The van hadn’t been there and it took over one hour to arrive. It was too cold in the shade, but the danger of getting sunburnt was pretty high in the sun, too. Okay, tick Hydrospeed off the bucket list. Been there, done that.
Axel wanted to spend our last day before the overnight bus ride to Santiago rather quiet. He decided to read his books and relax. For the lack of good literature (I found out my Kindle was broken when I wanted to pack it in Munich) I rented a bike instead to ride along the mountains to Playa Blanca at Caburgua. It’s at a lake that has warmer water than in Pucon due to thermal activity (there’s no swimming without a wetsuit in Pucon!). The first part was very scenic and the road turned into a thrilling mountain bike trail for a while before morphing back to an up-and-down dirt road, absorbing a lot of potential energy. Is that a false friend? Potential energy? Potentially.
By chance I came by the “Ojos del Caburgua”. I didn’t know what that place was, but the entrance fee was quiet low (500 CLP). So I rode in and found these beautiful triple (quadruple?) waterfall thing and a serene path through a forest along the river. Of course with a dog following me.
A couple of hours later I arrived at the black beach of Playa Negra and made my way along the beach to the supposingly white sands of Playa Blanca. Call me spoiled but the sand was neither sand nor was it white. Still, I went for a refreshing swim and spent some time at the beach doing… nothing.
The way back wasn’t too interesting as I took the main road. It was speedy though — almost a constant descent. I pitied the bikers on the opposite side of the road fighting their way up in the merciless sun. No, I really had made the right decision to use the “secret path” along the mountainside.
We had hoped to see J.P. from El Chalten that evening, but he didn’t make it to the meeting point (dinner at the Latitude 39) before we had to leave to catch our overnight bus to Santiago. It was one of the worse bus rides with children screaming and not much of sleep to obtain. Again we had left this lovely place called Pucon just in time before the bad weather arrived.
