We travelled from Chillan to Varillica on Thursday 11 July. The trip was a few hours by bus again and the town didn’t have that much exciting. Luckily we checked our emails and Igor our friend we met in Vina Del mar who has backpacked a lot of South America had recommended that we head to Pucon, just about the road about 20kms. Igor is a legend!
We stayed in Varillica 1 night then moved on to Pucon and found a very cool little town here. It’s Chile’s version of Queenstown New Zealand. The main town centre is really funky with lots of places to eat and drink. The places are all made to fit into the landscape all being made of wood logs and the town sites between a big lake and more national parks and a volcano.
It’s an adventure town with hiking, white water rafting, trekking the volcano hot springs (termas) and plenty more on offer.
Unfortunately though it’s been raining the whole time we were here! We went to the Volcano which has a small ski hill on it and went skiing for a day. The snow wasn’t the best and the biggest chairlift was closed so we spent the day just going up and down (maybe we were spoilt by Chillan). The view of the Volcano we had in the morning was really nice though.
We’ve been hoping to hike to the top of the Volcano while here. It’s still active and in town is a little GREEN, AMBER and RED alert system, pretty much like we have with the Fire Danger scale. It’s one of a few Volcanos that you can hike up and potentially see Lava! Unfortunately (the parents sigh with relief) we haven’t had decent weather to get up there so we won’t be able to do that one while here.
Instead we went water rafting one day. The rapids were Grade 3 and 4 and a lot of fun!! We loved it! It was very freezing!! But a great thrill. There were 6 of us paddling in the boat and one main instruction/navigator. A couple of waves had the front of the boat right up in the air, luckily Matt and another guy the same size were positioned at the front to hold the front of the boat down!!!
Tomorrow morning Monday 15th July we head to San Martin, Argentina and hopefully some better weather!
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