Waiting for the sun in Pucon

The road to Pucon is well worn with little backpacker footprints. I however, would recommend catching a bus. The view is much better.

Way back in Mendoza, over pitchers of wine at Mr Hugo's we'd starting hearing about Pucon and it's volcano – Volcan Villarrica. A little further in our travels, every casual conversation that started with 'So, where have you been and where are you going next?' would lead straight to gushing over Villarrica.

In fact by the time we arrived in Pucon we had recommendations for where to stay, who to hike with, how many days to allow for weather and what to wear.

So what's all the fuss about? Well Pucon is a tourist village located 12km or so from the base of an active volcano – Volcan Villarrica – whose smokin' top you can see right from town on a good day, like the one we arrived on. But more excitingly, on a fine day like the one we arrived on you can climb Volcan Villarrica, peer inside its smokin' crater before bum sliding all the way back down to the bottom. Need I say more?

As it's an active volcano, climbing is only permitted as part of a guided group, so that very afternoon we set off to find ourselves a guide and a group. Pucon is fundamentally a tourist town, so every second shop on it's main street advertises guides for climbing, rafting, horse riding and everything in between. So finding a guide proved to be the easy bit, the weather on the other hand was intending to be less cooperative.

We'd been forewarned to allow enough time to wait out the weather. In fact some people had hung out at their hostel for 5 days straight waiting for the sun to come out. So we studied the weather forecast on 'mountain weather' with batted breathed and scuttled over to the guide's office each time it looked like the sun might possibly, maybe show itself. In other words we were down there daily.

So with the following day out for climbing we needed a plan B. It's a good thing then, that volcanic regions have something other than active volcanoes: thermal springs which happen to be one of my favourite things.

We'd often been disappointed with thermal springs that were either ugly or overcrowded or both. But Termas Los Pozones, despite being one of the most popular in the area was perfect. Set right next to an icy river, we could hear the rushing water from all of the 9 rock pools.

Between them, the neat gardens were bursting with colour and the scent of roses was in the air.

The mountains surrounding the valley were delicately enveloped by mist on what had turned out to be a rainy day.

While contemplating the fact that life wasn't so bad even though we weren't able to climb Villaricca that day, we were surprised by a chirpy 'hello' and looking up to see two familiar faces. The two German girls had drank pisco sours with us in Puerto Natales before setting off on the 'W' the day we had left for El Calafate. We figured we'd probably never see them again and yet here they were more than 2000km north of we're we'd last seen them.

Yes, the road to Pucon is well worn.

Ruta 40 and a Travel Plan Fail

El Chalten has one ATM and it's usually empty. We knew this so we'd stocked up on Argentine pesos. Admittedly we chose a conservative sum, knowing that our days in Argentina were drawing to a close.

What we hadn't factored in, is that we would need to pay for the bus fare from El Chalten all the way up to Bariloche – a little over 1300km – in cash. For two tickets we needed over 900 pesos or over $300. Now forget over the phone credit card payments or asking the guy in the both next door to process the transaction then pay him back, cash was it and without it we weren't leaving El Chalten. What's more, buses from town only headed north every few days and we were running out of time.

After desperately trying the cash machine three days in a row, the ticket seller offered to hold our seats until the morning of the scheduled departure. The same day we would be returning from the Laguna Torro walk.

So we returned to town after racing back from our camp, with soaked boots and still wearing our beanies from when it had been snowing on the mountain. Actually, I think our gear scared a large guided group of day walkers we passed who probably wondered what they had gotten themselves into. Incidentally some were already complaining about how difficult the walk was. Pussies!

Our last hope was that the ATM had been refilled in our absence especially since the ticket seller had 'a feeling' it would be. Clearly his intuition was off.

We jumped on a bus that left at 12pm which we could pay for by credit card, but that only travelled half the way we needed to go. 

Glaciar Viedma: I'll be back!

 Ruta 40 is supposed to be the wild road trip to do in Argentina. Chile has an equivalent in the Carretera Austral and we'd spent a fair bit of time debating if we should hire a car to do the road trip thing. Unfortunately returning the car in a different location would have cost us two legs and an arm each so we settled on the bus thing.

Thank goodness. If you've ever driven anywhere outside of the coastal route in Australia you've probably seen about as much as Ruta 40 has to offer. Nothing. In fact, if you've ever driven somewhere that was so boring you wanted to remove your own eyeballs with your camping spoon just for something to do, that would be the equivalent.

After a night in Perito Moreno we arrived in Esquel the following afternoon with the brilliant plan of jumping across the border into Chile, catching a bus to the Chaiten and then a ferry to Isla Grande de Chiloe. Geographically this made a lot more sense than travelling north to Puerto Montt and then south to the island. 

We were obviously getting a little complacent with the photography side of things. This was taken in Esquel at least!

Great idea, but once we spent some time glued to the computer while sitting at a picnic bench next to our tent – with snow capped mountain views I might add, ie internet addict/outdoor enthusiast heaven – we realised there was only one ferry a week. Although the bakery in Esquel - Panificadora Esquel - sold amazing cakes and it was fun doing nothing we didn't have too much time to waste. 

And Esquel also had some very artistic graffitti.

 We'd decided before we left that our “Chile and Easter Island” Lonely Planet guidebook published in May 2003 wouldn't be that outdated as to be useless. Sure accommodation and restaurants might have changed and prices gone up, but the towns and natural places would still be there right?

Correct, unless your town happens to be near a volcano. See the reason there were so few ferries between Chaiten and Chiloe is because in 2008 Chaiten had been evacuated and subsequently partially destroyed by Volcan Chaiten which erupted for the first time in hundreds if not thousands of years. Given that it's still a bit unstable, lingering in the area is not highly recommended.

Needless to say, we chose to go the circuitous route to Chiloe via Bariloche and Puerto Montt. And you know what? As we passed back through El Bolson, even it seemed quite pretty this time round!

Or just outside of El Bolson, by the time we got the camera out.