A Week in Chile

Growing tired of lugging my boat from hostal to bus station, bus to bus, and then again to another hostal, I decided that I would fly to Chile, take the boat to Pucon and try to leave it there before spending the next few weeks travelling the easy way with just a small backpack.

Pucon is known by kayakers across the world as the place to head to in Chile, but it turns out that everyone else heads here too and the town feels more like a small Alpine skiing village rather than a South American town. After arranging to leave my boat with Ben from KayakChile.net I had a week left before my return flight from Santiago to Bogota.

Most visitors to Pucon come for the rafting, horseback riding, mountain biking, thermal springs and to climb the Villarica volcano which towers over the town. Rather than just sit around eating cake and drinking coffee, I decided to give it a crack as well. The first attempt was called off after a short walk up into the ski area when the weather deteriorated and we found ourselves surrounded by clouds, fortunately the second attempt coincided with a day of good weather.

Despite the torturously slow pace set by the guide, a couple of the group began to struggle fairly early on as we zig-zagged our way up the steep and icy slops with crampons and ice axes. Around 2/3rds of the way to the summit the guides stepped in and told 2 of the group they couldn't continue, and once another 2 voluntarily took the chance to stop as well there were just 3 of us left for the final hour or two to the summit.

Unfortunately the view from the summit was slightly obscured by the light cloud cover, but nonetheless it was definitely worth the treck. After 6 hrs of walking to reach the top, we each grabbed a plastic tray, and sliding with limited control back down, were back at the bottom within 30 minutes.