Sur de Chile

I love Chile. The people are really friendly, the weather is great, the supermarkets are full of fresh fruit and they eat Guacamole with everything. There is however, one thing we discovered that I don´t like one bit, and they´re called Tabanos, a type of horsefly that are big, mean and hungry.

From Bariloche our first stop back in Chile was a town called Puerto Varas, in the south of the Chilean lake district. It lies next to Lago Llanquihue and there are stunning views over to Volcan Orsono. One day we decided to jump on a local bus to go to Lago Todos Los Santos for a picnic, we´d heard it was a beautiful green lake, surrounded by volcanoes and with unbeatable scenery.

Unfortunately, we´d only been off the bus for 5 minutes before we were absolutley swarmed by Tabanos, we had at least 15 on each of us trying to bite through our clothes. So we both ran back to the bus and jumped straight back on, much to the drivers amusement, and headed back towards town. We learned one important piece of information from an old man on the bus - apparently Tabanos are particularly attracted to black and blue, so J in a bright blue tshirt and me in my black fleece were pretty much asking for it. Lesson learned, we stopped at a place called Las Cascadas on the way back and just about managed to take some nice pics of the waterfalls and Volcan Osorno while beating off the Tabanos.


From Puerto Varas we headed to Pucon further north in the lake district. We were booked in to stay in a brand new hostel, and when we arrived it was quite obvious that we were the first guests, and the guys who ran the place we´re learning along with us! The manager was the loveliest lady called Connie, who despite speaking not a word of English really made us feel welcome. She was also an amazing cook and let us sample what she was cooking. Despite a few teething problems Etnico Eco hostel was an amazing place to stay, the house was an old vicarage, it had been owned by one of the richest families in the town but had been unoccupied for 5 years since they moved out. It had a real feel of faded glory, complete with swimming pool, chapel/games room, and a huge garden full of trees with ripe cherries and lemons. There was also a huge dog called Mattheo - who had apparently been brought to the town from the country after he´d killed two llamas - but he seemed to be the softest, laziest beast alive now.

Pucon is surrounded by amazing countryside and there´s plenty of adventure sports on offer. As we´d had a week or so of being bloody lazy we thought it was time to get involved. Our first trip was to go rafting on the the upper Trancura river. It was amazing, although I think our guide Claudio despaired of our useless group quite a bit - it was something to do with the way he kept diving off the boat just before a rapid and leaving us to make our own way down it.

Our second day of activities was postponed due to storms, but a day later we began the attempt to climb nearby Volcan Villarrica. The owner of the hostel, Gustavo, was also a Mountain guide, and he took me, James and another couple from the hostel, Rob and Kim. I can honestly say it was obne of the scariest things I´ve ever done! Because of the rain the day before it was really icy and we had to wear crampons and use ice axes really early on in the climb. That combined with quite a wind and some bloody steep sections left me feeling terrified. James obviously loved it and was massively disapointed when halfway up we realised we weren´t going to be able to make it to the top because of the conditions. Me and Kim wimped out at a point above the clowds while Gustavo took James and Rob further up to the plateau to see the peak.

The best bit came when we had to climb down, when we got to a part where the ice had softened enough, we sat on our bums and slid down! Definitely my favoured bit of the climb. That evening we went to some hot springs just outside of Pucon called Termas Los Pozones. There were 8 or 9 pools in total, all of different temperatures and surrounded by river rock to retain their natural appearance, there was a small path running between them that followed the freezing cold glacial river that you could jump in at any time to cool off (James and Rob did, I´ve never heard such girly screams), the whole place had a zen like atmosphere. So much so that it was only when we arrived back at the hostel that I realised I´d nicked someone elses flip flops by accident when I got out of a pool - leaving them my well worn Havaianas in return. So if the said flip flop owner is reading this then I´m sorry!