Pucón
In truth, wherever we went after Rapa Nui was set up to be a disappointment. How can you expect to compete with the level of emotional connection and the once-in-a-lifetime memories we created there?
With those thoughts very much in my mind, we took another overnight bus down to the town of Pucón in southern Chile. Despite it technically being the tip of Patagonia, it caught me by surprise. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn't expecting a tiny skiing town, full of wooden chalet-style buildings heated by wood fires! The shock did me good, and stopped me comparing this new place to where we had come from, and instead allowed me to see it for what it was. I really enjoyed the main roads lined with outdoors shops and restaurants, the quiet residential streets, the interesting sculptures, the road signs with pictures of mountains on them, the actual mountains visible in every direction and the huge nearby lake and its black beach. With our first couple of days, we explored a little but mostly rested. Really we had come to Pucón for a very specific reason: to climb Villarrica.
Villarrica is an active volcano, covered in ice and snow. It looked quite imposing in the dark after our 4.30am wake up, however as the sun rose during the first section of our hike it lit up the sky with beautiful colours and made one side of the volcano ice reflect brightly into our eyes. After the first couple of kilometers of snow, the slope got steeper - up to 45 degrees at times! We got out crampons (shoe spikes) and an ice axe and after a lesson in what to do if you accidentally go sliding down the mountain (stick the axe in the ice and hold on), we got going again. The going was really tough at times. I think it's the hardest hike I've done. 4-5 hours in to the hike it took a lot of digging deep and pushing myself to keep going. It got easier once we could see the summit was close though, and after 6 hours 21 minutes (quite quick apparently, it's usually 7 hours) we made it to the top.
Standing around the crater of the volcano, we could see Argentina in the distance, and something like 50 different peaks of the Andes surrounding us. I was most excited though by the crater itself. We could see dark fumes emerging from the huge hole in the centre, and at times had to wear gas masks when the wind was blowing toxic fumes our way. The magma was too low to see, but when some loose rocks fells down the crater and in to the hole we heard and felt a roar as they burned up inside.
After some lunch, it was time to head back down. Luckily, down was a lot easier than up. Because the snow was good and soft, we were able to toboggan down the hill on tiny plastic trays we had brought up in our rucksacks. After a couple of attempts we started to get the hang of it, flying downhill, just about managing to stay within the path created by our guide sliding in front of us. We were often out of control, but mostly moving in the right direction. It was exhilarating fun, and a lot easier to enjoy that the walk up!
And with that, our trip was almost over. We showered and got on a night bus back to Santiago where we had about 24 hours before flying home to London. A brilliant end to a brilliant couple of months.
