World Chile Araucania Villarrica National Park

Paul's South American Travels

Pucon: Climbing volcano Villarica, white water rafting and sailing Jan 9, 2004

We reached Pucon on Monday 5th Jan, it is in the Chilean Lake District and is known in as the adventure and outdoors activity capital of Chile. It is also quite touristy (especially with the Chileans) and so a lot more expensive in hostels, so we camped it for 3 nights at 5 Dollars a night. The main town is like a Swiss or Canadian ski resort, with expensive shops and nice restaurants and bars all in the center of town. There are also loads of adventure companies selling ice hikes to the top of volcano Villarica, to rafting and kayak trips down the river rapids. Given all these activities we had to indulge, so we booked a trip up Villarica volcano, a class 4 rafting trip, and hired some Lasers to do a spot of sailing on lake Villarica. The volcano climb was most definitely the best activity I have ever done. Firstly it involved a difficult one hour trek up loose lava gravel to the beginning of the snow and ice cap. Then we donned waterproofs, gators and ice axes to begin the 4 hour climb to the summit of the volcano. It was easy enough going as we zig-zagged our way up (with a guide), passing what seemed like bottomless crevas's. At the top, the mountain was smoking, with the smell of sulphur burning the lungs and throat. I could only stand a few minutes at a time at the top. The thermal vents were also too hot to handle for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately I didn't see any bubbling lava (aparently it shows very seldom). To add to this our guide pointed out that the volcano last erupted in 1984, and was WELL overdue another eruption... very cool. The way down the mountain was absolutely amazing, and completely unexpected. The guides lead the team down about 20 yards before telling us to follow them down pre-made snow chutes. We literally slid our way down on our backsides in 20 minutes what took us 4 hours to climb. We were told we hit speeds of 30-40 mph! and given that I lifted off the snow several times - I believed them. We stopped by flipping onto our stomachs and slamming our ice axes into the snow and ice, just in time to walk around the section of crevas's. After this, we had a huge snowball fight between 4 other groups on the mountain... getting hit with a snowball made from ice can really hurt! To get down the last gravel section we simply removed all our waterproof gear and ran down the mountain, just like running down a sand dune, except a LOT dirtier than sand! Defintely the best 25 pounds I have ever spent! The following day we had the White Water Rafting trip, which wasn't quite as much fun as the volcano, but a laugh all the same. The class 4 rapids were pretty cool, especially when the guide sometimes couldn't do anything to prevent the boat getting sucked underwater. For 18 british pounds it was worth the hour or so on the water. The evening of the 8th was my last in Pucon I needed to get to Puerto Monte for the 9th before catching my flight to Puerto Natales on the 10th. So, I decided to hire a Laser dingy and do some sailing on the huge lake of Villarica, overlooking the mountain i'd climbed the day before. The sailing was completely unsupervised and no restrictions were in place as to the area of sailing. Needless to say I headed out to the middle of the lake with a couple of other foreigners for a spot of racing and fooling around. Only problem was, my main sheet got stuck and I could open up the sail, making it a long zig-zag journey back into shore... but I managed to explain the problem in my limited Spanish to avoid the extra charge of 2 hours rental! :-) That night I had a barbeque in the campsite with lots of steak and wine, and a few hours kip before catching the 8:15am bus to Puerto Monte.

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