Another long weekend... Pucon: 1st-4th Nov

In the week beginning the 29^th Oct, we did quite a bit of teaching on our own, we had to plan and take nearly all the classes – all except those who still had tests – which made a nice, though challenging change to our usual assisting. 

Then, thanks to the bank holidays for the ‘Day of the Dead’ on the 1^st November and Reformation Day on the 2nd, we had another 4 day weekend.

This time, we met up with the volunteers who live in Lautaro and went to Pucón, a town about a 2 hour bus ride south-east of Temuco on the coast of Lake Villarica, and the closest town to Volcán Villarica, the active volcano who’s tip we can see from Cholchol on a sunny day. (the base of the volcano is just 14km from Pucón). The town itself is very like somewhere you’d picture in the Swiss Alps, all wooden houses and very very touristy, and to be honest we could have been somewhere in Europe – except for the looming volcano of course. But we spent a very lovely 4 days there, and it was a very chilled and relaxing break.

Upon arrival, we stumbled off the bus and wondered around slightly confused until we ended up in one agency talking to a girl who turned out to be from England! and – even more weirdly – who’s boyfriend is from Cholchol! She gave us the load-down of all the different activities we could do from white water rafting, to a visit to the hotsprings as well as climbing the volcano itself. The later was something that I did, and still do, really want to do. But due to the price we decided to save that one for another time, maybe at the end of our travels if we have any money left!

The view of the lake from halfway up the hill.

In the end the first activity we opted for was horseriding. So on the Friday we set off on our horseride. It was a mapuche-led tour in the countyside which involved climbing halfway up one of the nearby mountains on horseback along some very narrow paths. The chilled attitude of Chileans was quite obvious in this activity from a) the lack of helmets and b) at the beginning of the ride, asking who could/who couldn’t ride and then plonking us all on horses, showing us how to hold the reins, how to turn left and how to turn right before off we set up a mountain! The view of the lake and the town was pretty spectacular and the ride down was, believe it or not, actually less scary than the journey up. We were all feeling pretty comfortable on our horses by this point and so managed a bit of trotting, and I even got cantering a bit too!

me at the bottom of the 'hidden waterfall'

It was so much fun that on Sunday, Beth, Danielle and I decided to do another horseride! This time we went to a ‘hidden waterfall’, which involved about half riding and half trekking down a very steep hillside to reach it but the 80m ‘cascada’ was definitely worth it! And it was just as fun as the first time too!

kayaking on the lake

The rest of the time involved mostly chilling, the weather was absolutely gorgeous – we spent a lot of time lying on the beach. We hired out some kayaks on the lake for an hour and also visited ‘los thermas’ one night, the natural hot springs which lie about 45 minutes out of Pucón – definitely an experience worth having!

All in all, it was a pretty awesome holiday and one less place to travel in the summer (although hopefully we might get to come back and do the volcano climb, financial situation permitting!). I feel very lucky to have already been able to travel quite a bit in this amazing country I now call home and every time I do, it makes me more excited for our proper travels in the summer!

By Monday it was back to Cholchol and back to ‘normal’. We’re hoping to visit Lautaro this weekend as it is one of the volunteers’ 18^th Birthday so yet another town we can cross off our list, and then after that there’s only one week until the 3 month mark! I’ll be writing a newsletter around this point, and I know quite a few people have already said they would like me to send them a copy. If you would like one, please send your email or postal addresses to spitfire062@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get one :)

¡Hasta Luego!

Hannah :)