This one will be a bit shorter than usual, since a) only one thing of real interest has happend since the last edition and b) we have some multimedia finally. Firstly, a brief update to get you in the picture.
On Tuesday we left Bariloche for our second country - Chile. The destination was Puerto Montt, a medium sized port city in the south of Chile. On the way, we encountered the Chilean customs service at the border. There were no problems, but it was a long wait while everyone got processed and all our bags were x-rayed for any offending food items. Apparently Argentinians don't trust Chilean beef and like to bring their own when they travel. Chile doesn't seem to appreciate this practice.
Anyway, after 7 hours on the bus we finally arrived at our destination. The next challenge was finding accomodation, and after talking with the bus station security, fending off several people interested in offering us a room to stay, we picked one and bunked down for the night. It turned out to be someone's home, with several guest rooms attached. This is a pretty common practice here, we're finding, and it was a pleasant enough experience. However, we didn't find much in Puerto Montt of interest, so we headed north the next day for Pucon.
Pucon is tourist central, situated on a nice lake and with a big volcano named Villarrica dominating the skyline to the east. Mr Cohen, who after our Andes trek the week before declared he would do no further trecks this trip, was very interested in climbing it.
We headed out of Pucon at about 7am, driving to the base of the volcano, at about 1,400 meters above sea level. We would be climbing a further 1,400m to arrive at the top some 4.5 hours later, a total of 2,884m, according to the iPhone GPS. The hike itself was very tiring, and about half of it was through snow, and interesting experience in and of itself. But we made it to the top, and had some spectacular views of the surrounding area, including several other volcanoes nearby, at least one of which is in Argentina.
Rather than slogging our way back down the mountain, we suited up in water-resistant outer clothing, strapped a piece of hard plastic between our legs and slid down the mountain. Yes, we slid down a volcano at about 25km/h at some points. Most entertaining. Dave Cohen apparently only figured out how to slow down on the last slope we went down, so he had lots of fun, including going face-first down the steepest run. My favourite moment of the descent was accidentally letting go of my ice pick, which we used to help slow us down, watching it cartwheel down the mountain beside me, and managing to catch it again in mid air. Where's a video camera when you need one?
Anyway, we made it to the bottom in one piece, somehow. You can check out our exploits yourself in three (yes THREE) different ways:
1. The map of our treck up and down the mountain (the iPhone managed to track us the whole way before dropping out just as we got back to the base camp). The Satellite view is the coolest, and if you click the "Replay Treck" button on the map you can watch our journey in super-speed time. Note the way faster descent :)
2. Photos!
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