Sunday, April 23, 2006

Volcano - part 1, a pretty bland introduction..

How can I begin to describe the amazing adventure of yesterday, when we climbed up a beautiful, snow-capped volcano?

We have been here in Pucon for 4 days now, and will leave for Santiago on a night sleeper bus tonight. From there we will fly up to Quito in Equador, thus concluding the Chile part of our trip. It´s been a fun, activity-packed 3 weeks, when we roamed from one place to another, by bus, by boat or by plane. It was quite easy to travel around in Chile, most of the places we go to are accessible by major bus companies, and it has also been quite safe - we haven´t encountered any robberies ( though one friend has a pair of pants stolen from his backpack while he left his luggage at the hostel unlocked) and most people have been fairly honest and trustworthy ( though the other friend was conned by a taxi tout at the santiago airport, and paid a whopping $150 for a taxi from airport to the city, 4-7 times the usual price! This can happen anywhere in the world, but he blammed it on his jetlag on the first day, and being unaccustomed to the exchange rate. My other friend and I wouldn´t let him forget about it though :)

So many funny moments in the trip, in different settings and with different people. We started the trip as a group of three (2 girls and 1 guy), and one week and half into the trip the other girl decided not to do the expensive boat trip and took a different route ( with some cute european guys! understandable I guess..) then we met up with another friend after the boat trip and the group dynamics changed again. Our previously harmoneous group became somewhat chaotic, as the fighting begins between the new member ( a pretty good friend) and I. It´s a source of endless amusement for the other friend and for anyone standing by, but not for me!

However, the other guy is a bit of a pretty girl chaser, whose answer to just about everything in life is ¨as long as she´s pretty!¨. I once compared his simplistic approach to life to that of Homer Simpson, and he refuted.. ¨just because I like pretty girls and to watch lesbians doesn´t mean I´m simple...¨Not long after, he confirmed that most of his guy friends and one girl agree with his mentality and doésn´t see a correlation between being voyeuristic and simplistic. What do you think? Bear in mind that ¨pretty¨and ¨lesbians¨comprises of 49 percent of his conversation content...

My two travelling companions are like polar opposites of each other. If one is ying then the other yang. One chatty, the other reserved chattiness for pretty girls only. Hence he´s been quiet the whole trip, almost. He blames it on his sore throat, be we know better! The chatty one is more stubborn sometimes, whereas the other one is easy going, as long as there´s a pretty girl around the corner, or at least the promise of one. It´s a study in human nature to see how two guys can be so different. (okay, the last two paragraphs were added because one of my travel buddies read my entry and said it's too bland and needs more juicy stuff.. so here it is ;)

Anyhow let´s get to Pucon. It is a beautiful town, set amongst the mountains, lakes and volcanos. It´s considered part of the lake district in Chile and in summer time, it´s a tourist / backpacker haven. After the boat trip, we spent a brief two days visiting the island of Chiloe, which has an unique island charm of its own, with lush, unspoilt forests and cute colourful ¨paddlepop stick¨houses by the seaside. Our search for penguins at Chiloe was not entirely successful, as low tide prevented us from reaching the penguin island by boat, but we did spot them using a telescope and binoculars from a nearby beach. Nevertheless, we all fell under the relaxed island spell of Chiloe, and was a little sad to wave it goodbye.

From Chiloe we took two buses to get to Pucon, and arrived at 11pm at night. Luckily we´ve already booked for an accomodation using a guidebook, and the lady running the homestead came to pick us up from the bus terminal. She´s a middle-aged woman from Switzerland, been living in Chile for 10 years and now spent her time running the house, looking after her two kids and at the same time teach Spanish classes and also do massages. We got along pretty well, especially my chatty friend who was happy to find someone new to talk to. Her kids are also very sweet, especially the little one, who is ten and have just started to learn English. We spent hours talking to her, looking up our Spanish phrasebooks and attemping some conversation. We pointed out pictures of Koala and Kangaroo from her illustrated animal book, and also found out one of my travel companion, whose grew up in NZ but lived in Oz for over 16 years didn´t know what a wombat look like. He pointed to a picture of a fruitbat and said, ¨that´s wombat right?¨

Just before I left for South America, a good friend gave me details about her Chilean friend whose Dad is living in Pucon. She was very enthusiastic and emphasised that we should definitely get in touch. So we did, and found ourselves wandering through his beautiful property in the outskirt of Pucon, which he purchased about 3 years ago in order to build his dream house, guesthouses and campsite for his visitors. Harold is an evangelical Christian who lived in Australia for over 30 years and only recently returned to Chile after all his kids have grown up. It was his passion to be back to the place of his childhood, and he wanted to build a place to show its charms to his visitors. From his place you can see several mountains, though there´s probably more because our view was somewhat blocked by the clouds and haze that day. Harold took us around his property, and we saw a half completed log cabin with three bedrooms, his plans for the campsite, the beginning of the toilet and shower block for the campers, and the massive garden of trees and flowers that he started to plant. It was pretty inspiring to see his dream in progress, and he invited to come back in a year´s time if we can, and see it in its completion. After several hours in his property, he took us to a nearby National Park which is also a popular tourist attraction in summertime. Though it was windy and raining slightly, we saw a massive lake in our first stop, then ventured into the forest and spent hours walking around more lakes, waterfalls, and trees. There was one place called the ¨Eye of lake¨which is where two streams running underground from the lake, came above ground and joined together as waterfalls. We took lots of pictures!

The day after (2nd day in Pucon) was the day we saw the sun. And the Volcano Vallarica for the first time. It was visible almost everywhere you go in Pucon (even from hostel), and certainly inspired many people to sign up for the Volcano hike for the following day, including us. I was drawn by the possibility of a beautiful view and photos from the volcano, and of course the challenge and the possibility of an adventure. But I was also shit scared... My treking experience in Patagonia hasn´t exactly filled me with confidence, since I was one of the slowest walkers out there and even people with huge backpacks could overtake me. I remember huffing and puffing all the way in the Torres De Paine, trying hard to keep up with my friends, and wishing I had done more cardio classes before I came. So signing up for the volano trek seemed a brave and dubious move...

We were told to get plenty of sleep the night before, and to carry enough food and at least 1.5 litres of water. The shopping for food part was fun :) We roamed around a huge supermarket and planned what to bring, what to cook for breakfast, and all that exciting stuff. Unfortunately we didn´t get much sleep because the chatty one was chatting...

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