The smoky smell of a wood burning
furnace, and the warmth of the hostel is what I will remember most
about Pucon. After the cold nights in our Santiago apartment, the
warm hostel was a delight. We arrived in Pucon on an overnight bus to
Hostel Victor, a cozy place that reminded me of the bed and
breakfasts we had stayed in at Blue Mountain. After getting groceries
and eating breakfast, we wandered around looking at the various tour
companies. Arriving in the morning, we had missed the morning tours
that started at 9 am. A girl named Grace, who spoke English very
well, told us about a water fall and drew us a map of how to get
there. When she described how to get there, I started to laugh
because I knew it was going to be interesting. So with our lunch
packed, map in hand, we took a collective taxi to Los Calabosos. So
you can guess how the rest of our day went. We got lost. We
diligently tried to read the crazy map Grace drew for us and
eventually after eating all our lunch, called it a day and went back.
During the wandering, we walked along many dirt roads, one of which
took us to to a street of beautiful homes built on some large
properties. We saw these bright coloured birds, which made a pretty
loud squawking noise. I have no idea what type of birds they are
though. Also two pigs walked off their property and passed by us,
which explains the picture. When we got back to town we headed to a
restaurant off the main road (less expensive) for cerveza and
cazuela! A hearty soup of vegetables and meat, which tastes just like
how you would imagine, simple but delicious. So the day wasn't a
complete loss.
The next day, we went to a tour agency to take us to Volcano Villarica. Yes, snowboarding on a volcano. How awesome is that! The day was beautiful and we had an easy, relaxed day of snowboarding. The view from the resort was spectacular, with the pristine blue Lago Vallarica, and the volcanoes in the distance (there are three active volcanoes near Pucon). My first impression of the resort was that it is small, and that there wasn't as much snow as I expected (also no snow making equipment around). Although we had a nice day snowboarding here, it definitely wasn't the adrenaline rush we experienced at Whistler. Only one of the three lifts were running. Why? Nobody knows and it's always like that. The lift that was operating didn't take us very far up the volcano. We could see people were trekking up the volcano with their gear and would board or ski down from the top. We tried to do the same but half an hour into it we gave up. Maybe it was the altitude or all the gear but we didn't get very far. That's the 2nd day in a row of failed hiking!
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