Río Claro

The next day was a Beach Day with Jen and an English girl we met on the lakeside black 'sand' beach of Pucon (read: tiny hurty stones). Had a swim and when I looked back to the beach I realised how rammed the beach was! After this I sat in the bar with a beer and watched the sunset over the lake with my hostel pals.

The kitchen here is great because it's clean (ha shock). It's nice because there's a little separate cabin with some dorms in and we have our own separate kitchen away from the hostel riff raff. Its like having a little family kitchen as not many of us use it. I've actually started making an effort with my food now. Breakfast every day is porridge with apple and banana, and some of Greg's delicious jam.

The next day was the much awaited volcano. There had been quite a bit of hype and hanging around from hostel buddies waiting to do the volcano which meant I actually had lost some enthusiasm for it strangely. However all my grumping was in error cos it was excellent.

We woke up really early (5am bleurgh!) to meet the guides in the courtyard of the hostel and faff around with kit. They give you a soggy canvas backpack filled with random items to be used later and also you have to wear the boots they provide, as they're more solid and better for walking on snow and ice with. This led to quite a bit of faffing to work out sizes, particularly from me as queen of faff. Then we hopped into a minibus which was cracking out some absolute tunes and whizzed up to the volcano, reaching our start point (which is already pretty high up) just in time for sunrise. It was beautiful and you could see so far, to the lake of Pucon and a number of other tall peaks and volcanoes, clouds and amazing morning colours.

The group had the option to take a chairlift partway up, for the first hour of walking, so we divided into two. Obviously I wasn't a wimp and did the extra walking. It wasn't especially far. My group contained Grey, the American guy who I went hydrospeeding with; a guy from Norway who is Alastair's twin as he is really tall and skinny and possibly gay, and who found me really amusing (understandable), a German couple and a couple from England who I had actually first met in the hostel in Torres Del Paine and had randomly turned up at my hostel in Pucon. We were a good crew.

I really enjoy goal achieving in the outdoors in a group and this fulfilled all those criteria. Halfway up the volcano we got to the glacier which was quite snowy rather than icy thankfully, and the guides showed us how to walk using the ice picks and how to ram them into the ice if we were to fall and slide away. We decided we didn't need a break as we are team awesome and to crack on, but unfortunately a combination of the heat and lack of water break and altitude made us all very regretful and whiney quite quickly. The guides decided to call me Inglaterra or England rather than use my actual name for some reason, my usual blind enthusiasm amusing them.

Anyway we got to the top after a little bit of altitude wooziness and immediately forgot about our complaints. I had no prior expectations of the volcano top because a guy from the hostel, Hussain, who had done it a few days prior, told me not to look at any photos. It was so cool! The colour of the crater rock was really interesting and apparently created by the sulphur billowing out of the pinhole that was the volcano. The gas was so cool and i didn't realise that the volcano would be belching so much of this thick, hot, rippling and nose burning gas out. We even got some spitting of lava. Everyone took dorky selfies with gas masks on (which did basically nothing useful). The view was also excellent of all the other volcanoes and nearly 360 degrees of the whole area.

The fun wasn't over yet! We scrambled down from the crater and ate our lunches sat in the snow. I'd brought so much food as I'd learned from Kili that the way to beat altitude is food and water to excess. We combined again with the chairlift half of our team and all kitted up with the gear in our bags, sort of like fisherman's protective gear with a plastic circular sled thing. We looked great. We then literally slid down the volcano in the snow either on our bums or on the sleds in grooves that had been hollowed out. We went past a chairlift which had been destroyed in the 1970s by an eruption and just left as a huge concrete structure halfway up the volcano. The last part of the walk involved kind of skiing down the volcanic ash to the bottom, again similar terrain to kili. We were all desperate for a pee when we got down and when we got back to the hostel all had a beer.

It was absolutely awesome.

I had a huge burger out and got on my 12h bus to Valparaiso... and was so tired I slept for 7 hours! Winner.

1- Lisa in stylish gearLes mer