Yes, yes, yes, I am WAY behind on my blog! I am playing catch-up now and have a few blogs that are ready to post.
About 1 week after Alison's parents left after a 5 week visit, Jeremy's parents arrived! Keeping with our short little tradition with visitors, we decided to rent another fabulous house for a few days, this time in the South within Chile's lake district in a town called Pucon.
The most notable feature about Pucon is the fact that it lies just beneath an active volcano - Volcan Villarrica. Our only other experience with volcanos was in Indonesia (Agung and Batur, in Bali - both of which we climbed), which were like smallish mountains with the tops cut off and only when you get really close to the crater at the center do you see a tiny bit of smoke rising upwards. Villarrica is quite different than this. First of all, it is massive and covered with snow all year round. Also, it features a large plume of smoke. Most importantly, the volcano is so active that it glows red at night. The house we rented had great views from the front and the back, of both the volcano and the lake. On the second night Jeremy awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and ended up dragging me to the window to see the glowing volcano. I'm pretty much blind without contacts so I fumbled for my glasses in the dark so that I could get a look at what he was talking about, because I didn't believe it. But it was true - the volcano glows red at night. This startling amount of activity explains why Pucon has a sign in the town that reports how active the volcano is each day! What a place!
Along with volcanos come hot springs. On our first full day in Pucon it poured rain. We decided to pick the most remote hot springs that were on the map (just about 5 km from the Argentinian boarder, way up in the mountains) and dragged Jeremy's parents along on the quest. Pretty soon we were on dirt, washed out roads and crossing rivers on log bridges, thinking we would never find the illusive hot springs we were looking for. Eventually we came to a retreat nestled in the middle of the forest on the mountain and were greeted by an Austrian volunteer (very strange, but she enjoyed speaking German with Jeremy's Dad). The hot springs was basically a bunch of cabins in the woods, with 5 different pools in various locations in the woods, along rivers and streams. In the pouring rain, we enjoyed each and every pool, picking raspberries along the paths in between. If you are going to be wet, you might as well be really wet and in warm water, we reasoned! It was a perfect way to spend a miserable rainy day!
Jeremy and I also had the opportunity to sneak away for an awesome 16 km hike at the base of the volcano, which had stunning views and a wide variety of terrain that varied from lava trails from the last eruption in 1971, to forests, to alpine fields. There is a small ski hill (closed for the summer season) within the national park that scales the side of the volcano. Among other things, we enjoyed old fashioned kuchen from a local bakery, star gazing from the roof top hot tub, homemade pizza from the house pizza oven, fresh raspberries from the garden, a traditional Mapuchu meal and a brisk dip in the glacier fed lake at playa blanca.
We are big fans of BBC Earth in our house - it is one of the kids' favourite DVD box sets - and incidentally there are several parts that feature various areas of Chile, including Pucon. One of the scenes from the video is the ancient forests near the base of Villarrica (posted in this blog).
Overall, although Pucon is absolutely packed with vacationers in the summer months, it is a beautiful area of Chile to visit, particularly if you avoid the town itself and spend your time in the surrounding areas. We're eager to return to the South and head much further South next time into Patagonia, but that will need to wait until next summer!
No comments:
Post a Comment