Whew. I just go back from an extremely exhausting but absolutely amazing weekend in Pucón. Pucón is a small city in the South (not deep south, but south) that is a hot spot for outdoorsy tourists from around the world. In the backdrop of the town looms the impressive Volcano Villarica and Lake Villarica. The whole area has quite a magical feel because vapor from the underground lava rivers can be seen rising from all directions in the hills. The water in the lake is quite warm and we had the opportunity to vistit nearby hotsprings on Sunday was well. In many respects this region reminded me greatly of the northwest United States. For example, everywhere there is lush, green vegitation (though different types of plants) and the climate is wet and misty. Oh yeah, and just like in Oregon, blackberrys are abundant in the fall! We also hiked to a few waterfalls that could easily be found in the Colombia Gorge.
While the highlight of my weekend was certainly summiting Villarica, I'll start with our actiivieis the first day. After a 12 hour bus ride over Thursday night, we arrived in Pucon and went directly to small villiage to meet some Mapuches. Mapuches are the the most populous group of native Chileans (I believe there are about 1 million) that live mostly in this lake region. We went to a cultural musuem, had a delicious meal, and then they took us out to the country to learn about ceremonies, dance, sing, play games etc...They were wonderful, they love to share their culture and their stories with us. I do regret not bringing my camera out to the festivities in the countryside, but maybe later I will steal some pics from others to show everyone.
Then, Saturday we got to choose between a number of activies and I chose the volcano ascent. Given my experience with hiking, I assumed the hike would be hard, but not so bad. I was wrong. It was by far the most physically challenging thing I have ever done. This was on ordinary hike. I'm talking about hiking with crampons and ice axes through snow for hours and hours. I can't even say I enjoyed the whole thing, but I did it. And as always, it felt amazing to have succeeded in something so hard. Coming down the mountain was quite a riot, we slid on our butts in the snow almost all the way to the bottom. One of my pics shows the snow tunnels we slid on. I feel this blog is getting quite long...but whew. What a weekend.
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What an awesome experience! Your views from the summit look a lot like views of the big Cascade Volcanos in Wash/Ore. and in fact are so similar geologically. Did you know Mount St Helens is made up of andesite named after the Andes Mountains?
Glad you made it back safe and sound...yea P'uddy!!!!
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