Pucon - the Chamonix of the Southern Hemisphere!

(Tuesday 18th to Thursday 20th October).

At some point on the 4hour bus trip to Temuco, and several hours after we'd got over the trauma of convincing the conductors to put the bikes on the bus (there was plenty of space in the luggage compartment... Seriously!), I'd managed to make headway with the blog and Ant suggested an amendment to our route.

We'd planned to cycle from Temuco towards the first lake Villirica (whoes name reminds me too much of the town Billericay in Essex!), then south from there. But after much consideration of the map and guide book, Ant came up with what we would later realise was an excellent plan.

Get a second bus from Temuco to Pucon so we could actually see the culinary and adventure capital of Sur Chile. Otherwise we would have missed it or had to do some serious back tracking. We left it to the cycle touring gods to decide - if we could find a bus that was happy to take bikes we would go, otherwise we'd get on our bikes...

...the bus was more than happy to take bikes and us, and left in half an our - perfect! Just enough time for Ant to source some lunch. Off he trotted leaving me to mind the boys at the bus station. He came back with a donut looking fried bread and... An egg... Literally an egg... In its shell! Hilarious. Turns out he'd asked for 'bread with egg' and that's quite literally what he got! Not quite the omelette he was hoping for, but at least the egg was boiled and warm inside!

So we headed south under the cover of a bus, and watched the weather get rainier and colder from the safety of the bus window.
Arriving in Pucon at around 5pm severely underdressed in our shorts and t shirts (we needed at least another 2layers and waterproofs here!), we quickly changed our plan of cycling to a cool, guide book recommended Hostal the other side of town and settled for the rather nice looking one near the bus station "Hostal alto Panguin". It was lovely inside, all new clean and shiny with an amazing shower and very reasonably priced. Moreover, the owners were delighted to house us for the night - they buzzed around almost singing with delight as they showed us the choice of rooms!

So we settled in, then ventured onto the main street to find the guidebook recommended restaurant "Trawen" - less because of the food recommendation (though it did sound good!), but more because of the sentence "houses the best craft ale selection in town".
As we wondered the streets we immediately fell in love with this southern ski resort. It could have been plucked out of the alps and dropped here. It really would be hard to not stay at least another day!

We made ourselves the promise - either we leave tomorrow, or we do something adventurous tomorrow and stay another night (it's not like we were short of options, climb the active volcano, raft, hike, trek, kayak, even ski... The list and tour operators was endless!).
The morning came and there was no way we were leaving, so we booked in for another night and set about finding someone to take us rafting.

At 11am we were on our way to the white waters with Florencia (a tour company who I can't recommend enough! They were brilliant).
By 12 we were on the water and I was yet again learning to break my fear of all things wet and wavey! Our guide was brilliant, he added enough theatre to the experience to make us anticipate what was coming, but navigated us through the rapids expertly - no mean task given we were perhaps the 6 least coordinated folk he'd ever seen in a boat!! We also had a guy in a safety raft ready to catch us if we flipped, and another dude in a kayak taking the most brilliant pictures! At one point he gave us the opportunity to 'swim' a section of rapids instead of rafting them. Ant was the only crew member crazy enough to take him up on this offer, and looked slightly worse for wear for it! He hopped over board into the freezing cold water, gasping for breath, and floated downstream whilst being swept by 2m high waves! Thankfully our guide never let him get more than a few feet away from the boat and quickly hauled him back in as if he was as light as a feather. Exhilarating by all accounts!
So pleased we stayed the extra day, what an awesome way to see the valley, volcano and beautiful countryside.

After left over lunch of our spag bol, we mooched into town, watched the sunset over the volcano and lake (glorious) and after wondering around this lovely place, found latitude 39, an American bar, to drink beer and eat tacos and hamburgers.
Brilliant day!