Pucon

I've divided up Pucon as I did quite a lot and also have some good pics (more than the 6 allowed per post).

I arrived in Pucon after a 4.5 hour bus journey and many episodes of Crazy Ex Girlfriend to the 'number 1 best hostel' in South America. It was a bit manic when I first arrived, it seemed very busy and I wasn't especially in the mood to socialise so I made dinner and hopped around the 3 kitchen/eating areas to find wi-fi. I conceded to a small amount of socialising which then evolved into drinking games with one of the groups I was talking to, at which point I pretended I was going to get my wine but instead went to hide in an optimal wi-fi corner and went to bed. Wild!

The next morning I enjoyed my first bowl of cereal in a while as breakfast is not included here, and met the Greg, who is Austrian and works with hotels, and is a great personality because he comes across as fairly serious and introspective but then you realise that actually hes a secret sweetie.

I went to a welcome meeting from the hostel owner to explain all the things to do in Pucon, which is basically an outdoors centre masquerading as a town. I became overwhelmed with all the excellent sounding options and immediately booked another night and accepted that I would be haemorrhaging money here.

One thing that everyone in my hostel was very keen to do was climb the volcano that dominates the sky over the town. It last erupted in 2015 and is South America's most active volcano. Unfortunately it had not actually been seen for the last few days because of cloud cover and rain. We would have to wait. Luckily waiting here is easy. I went about spending my cash.

My first activity was the same day- hydrospeeding. I was a bit concerned this might be a shit version of kayaking but at 100,000 pesos I was struggling to justify spending the money on kayaking and this would get me at least splashed in the face for 20,000 instead. The rain had made some bouncy rapids and off we went at 6pm, concerned about being cold until we were squeezed into our ridiculously thick wetsuits and started flapping around like seals holding foam boards. Carmen was staying in another cheaper hostel and joined me, a German girl called Heike and a pair of brothers from South Carolina. It was actually pretty fun even when I got calf cramp halfway down a rapid and a sexy rash from the wetsuit.

That evening the hydrospeeding gang minus Carmen but plus an awesome girl from Colorado called Jen went to a bar and I sampled my first and maybe last Terremoto.

'TERREMOTO - Pipeño (a type of sweet fermented wine) with pineapple ice-cream. Terremoto literally translates as 'Earthquake' since you are left with the ground (and legs) feeling very shaky.'

It was the sweetest thing ever.

The next day Jen, Heike and I went hiking to a waterfall, or 'salto'. This was billed by the hostel as a bit of a special secret waterfall and they had made an artistic homemade map for us to follow to find it. The first half of the walk was along main roads and the second part up a very steep dusty non scenic road. We managed to get bits and bobs of lifts from locals and Chilean holiday makers. Jen had decided she could do the walk in flip flops and white shorts. We wandered into some woods and promptly got very lost.

I later found out that everyone in the hostel who had done this walk had done exactly the same thing as us. Doh!

So we literally slid down this ridiculous path that retrospectively was NOT a path, just the wrong way that had been forged by many others before us. It was unbelievably steep and muddy from all the rain over the previous days. We got wrapped in vines. We had to bum slide to avoid death by falling. Jen's white shorts met their end and she ended up barefoot as there was no chance for her flip flops. Heike cracked on at the front and earned the nickname 'sturdy German'. We made it down to the river, tried to walk along it to get to the waterfall but then had to turn back and go back up the whole way because there was no chance. At the top we quickly found a pretty obvious correct route.

The waterfall was luckily very pretty once we actually found it, and satisfyingly tall. One of the cars that had given us a lift took pity on us as we were so muddy and by this point I had a scrape from a tree on my leg that was bleeding and adding to the general patheticness. Good adventure.

The next day I went horse riding for basically the first time ever. I have a suspicious relationship with horses normally as they're a bit kicky and toothy. I also fell off one when i was about 7 and ended up sat in the mud which I (wrongly or rightly) blame the horse for. We were allocated our horses and initially mine, Sombra (meaning shadow, because she is black I guess) didn't listen to me at all and just did what she wanted...eating grass, randomly speeding up, mini jumping over streams. Despite me kicking and generally trying to boss her about she completely ignored me. She also had a problem with one of the other horses in the group following a previous tiff over a male horse, so she couldn't walk ahead or behind of this horse in case they kicked off at each other. One of the other horses in the group was a bit angsty too and needed to be in front at all times. Sombra tried to overtake him at one point which led to a scuffle and me being a bit freaked out when Sombra legged it sideways into a tree. However after a while we eased into a fairly sensible relationship of at least understanding if not mutual respect. She even nuzzled my hand at the end. We walked with the horses through the countryside, up and down the hills, getting my first view of the picture perfect volcano. Previously I'd done a lot of pointing at various small slopes and questioning whether these were the volcano. I realised how wrong I'd been as now i was seeing the volcano I was realising it was CLASSIC volcano.

It was interesting learning to trust the footing of the horses and realising that they may slide in the mud but they are still way more controlled than we would be on our feet.

1- hydrospeeding (l-r Heike, carmen, me, grey and will)Read more