RTW: Exchange in Chile

Adventurous Pusko

Taking off from Santiago was not as easy as I had anticipated, but also the excitement of the upcoming travels were a good motivation to get everything organized, send a package to Finland and say goodbye to the rest of the people.

From Santiago we took off to Pucòn (or Pusko, as "one" co-traveller thought the name to be at first), a small city some 500+ kilometers south of Santiago near the Argentinian border. It is the place in Chile to do it all when adventure travel and experiences are concerned. I was a bit worried that we might be wasting our time there, as I had heard the weather had been terrible there for a while. However, when we arrived, the sky was totally cloudless.

First we took a tour of local sights and then made sure we had ourselves booked on the climb on top of a 2900-meter volcano (Volcan Villarrica) for the next day. We were in luck indeed, as we later heard that in June 2005 only one day was good enough for climbing the volcano. Here are some pics from the first day (in the last one you see the volcano):







Climbing the volcano was a bit strenuous, but not as much as I had thought. It was a bit dangerous though with the possibly extreme weather conditions and the fact that the volcano is in fact active (pool of hot magma in the crater all the time). The steep price did include all the necessary equipment and insurances, plus expert guides.

The climb started early in the day to have a chance to get there and back before dark. At no point were we guaranteed to reach top, but again we had luck and were blessed with clear weather (even climbing in a t-shirt at times) until the 5,5 hour climb was done. I did not even care that that day the volcano was spewing out so much vapor (last photo below) we could not see the magma in the crater. I guess you cannot win all the time, huh? Especially as coming down went fast due to clouds gathering behind us on the top (by the time we were down again you could not even see the volcano anymore -and the next day the weather was terrible all day) and thanks to the guides that led everybody down the slopes on our asses, a little childish fun to seal the deal.















On our last day in Pucon wew still went to bathe in the hot springs before we headed to the happy couples' capìtal of the world, Puerto Montt (look closely at the statues in the picture). From here we will take a 4-day ferry to Puerto Natales, luckily already tomorrow.. To see the female thinking about this trip, go see Johanna's blog (link on the left).

posted by Kassu @ 5:00 PM