Pucon, Chile

We headed to Chile after 2-1/2 months in Argentina. Pucon sounded like a nice place to go with an active volcano to climb and lots of good trekking opportunities. We arrived to a torrential rain storm and a small earthquake (which we slept through!!).... seemed like a welcoming town though. All in all, kind of reminded us of Banff though. The main streets are busy as heck but the places off the beaten track are almost deserted by comparison.
We headed for Volcan Villarrica on a blue-sky Monday morning, after being in town for the rainy weekend. Apparently there is an organization named CONAF that regulates who goes up the mountain and who goes into the park for that matter, and after many people in town told us that CONAF would not let people go up the volcano without a guide, but they were not open on the weekend for us to go talk to them and show them our ACC membership, so we just decided that going early might get us in before the CONAF dudes got out of bed. Well, needless to say, it worked. We left town just after 6am (not exactly an alpine start) and rolled right into the park without seeing a CONAF person at all. We summitted just after 10am, a few minutes after a guided party that left town at 4am. The sulfur and phosphorus (I think - all I know is that it smelled like a mix of rotten eggs and lit matches) at the top were unbearable unless you stood on the windward side. Needless to say, most guided parties didn't necessarily stand on the windward side...perhaps this was the guide's way of limiting the amount of time he had to stand at the top. We got a few pics, looked down into the crater and watched as the guided groups stood on snow bridges on the leeward side of the crater and looked down in.... hmmmmm...
On the way down we saw about 300 more people coming up. What a ridiculous sight! And we never did see a CONAF person, so I don't know what that's all about.

Back to Pucon to figure out what else to do.... we headed to a beautiful waterfall, which we had to ourselves for about half the time we were there. Then the weather forecast turned perfect and there is a 6-day trek that is called the Villarrica traverse that sounded interesting, so we geared up with a bunch food and set out. The traverse was extremely beautiful, with volcanic scenery to start, followed by monkey-puzzle tree forests, followed by more volcanic plateaus, and more forest. Finally we got into the lakes and more jagged-looking peaks to finish off the trek. We ended up doing it in 4.5 days, which was a bit fast, but I don't know why you'd stretch it out to 6 days.

Then it was off to Santiago.....