a hard town to leave

we climbed this chap
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We decide to travel to Pucon along the "Ruta Interlagos" as it sounded scenic and like there might be chance for some touristic cake eating along the way.  well it was certainly scenic.  we kept to the shores of Lago Colico and Lago Carburga and then the road started to climb...and climb...and climb.  the trouble with road maps is they don´t show the contours.  we didn´t see another car for three hours.  we did see cowboys with their dogs and carts pulled by cows (or oxen -what is the difference anyway?? answers in an email please).  No cakes here.  We arrived in Pucon at 5pm and put our tent up  in the light, how civilised.

the end of the road to Coñaripe
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Pucon is a small town situated between the shimmering waters if Lago Villarica and the smoke spewing cone of Volcan Villarica, with several raging white water rivers and a lot of thermal spring nearby -NICE.  I had read in my guidebook that "Pucon had the best small town tourism infrastructure South of Costa Rica" - now i was a,little concerned having not like the tourist trap towns of CR.  But i was pleasantly surprised - the town was more chilled, the tour guides less pushy, less people and more normal people going about their lives.  Of course this may have a lot to with being in Pucon slightly out of season.  I saw some postcards of the beach in summer and it looked like Brighton beach on a bank holiday -packed like oiled sardines, just swap the pebbles for black sand and the hotels for volcanos.

We slid down the snowy slopes of the volcano on our arses using an icepick as a brake

This not me, but this is what hidrospeeding looks like
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We spent our first day mooching around,enjoying the civilisation, sitting in cafes watching the smoke billowing out of the volcano and checking what sort of fun we could have here.  We booked a trip to climb to the volcanos crater through the hostel "ecole!", I can´t remember what agency they used but the guides were friendly, the equipment seemed good (but what do i know?).  They said if the weather was bad we wouldn´t go and would get a refund but once we started walking that was it for our money even if we had to turn back.  as it turned out we couldn´t go the next day due to rain at the summit but we went the day after.  the guides said the cloud we could see was just a low level layer and w soon be above it.  They were right.....and wrong, there was a low level but also a high level that obscured the top for much of the day. we walked up anyway, a long climb on lava and ice. the views of the surrounding peaks poking up through the cloud layer were impressive, but we didn´t get to see the lava due to the clouds at the top.  Unfortunately we found out half way up that our camera memory card had corrupted, so no piccies.  quite annoying, but not as annoying as if we had been able see the lava!  The best part of the trip was the way back down.  We slid down the snowy slopes of the volcano on our arses using an icepick as a brake.  we slid in channels, presumably worn by other peoples bums, that were so deep and steep at times that it was like being on a bobsleigh run.  LOTS OF FUN.

On the day that we couldn´t climb the volcano we booked a last minute hidrospeeding trip.  This is basically floating down a a whitewater river with a thick, padded wetsuit and a pointy float instead of a raft - see photo.  Good fun, but hard work on the old thighs.  I think alex b´s float was a bit small for him (or he a bit heavy for the float?) as he found it hard to keep up with me and the two guides.

on the fourth day we tried our best to leave the area but were thwarted at every turn.  first the car sort of broke down when we were trying to drive to a lake for a nice walk so we had to take it back to a mechanic in Pucon where h replaced the regulatadora whilst we sat on the beach.  by this time it was 6.30m and we tried to drive to Coñaripe via a camping spot at some thermal springs, all clearly marked on our road map.  we turned off the main road and drove toward Coñaripe, however the road deteriorated more and more until we got to a sign that said the road was in "mal condicion" (like we didn´t know) and that we should not try and get to Coñaripe -now this would have been handy info 35km ago when we left the main road.  it was dark by now so we camped wild by the side of the track -and only mistook one horse for a monster in the night.  Only to have to drive back to Pucon the next day!  see attached photo of the end of the road.