Pucón Adventure

La Aventura del Dickey y el Mevon offically has started. I met Devon right after the sunrise on the 16^th of December in Santiago’s Airport. We spent the next two days in Santiago, although we partied at Salamurano, a hype club in Santiago until 5 in the am, Devon used the majority of this time in Santiago to catch up on sleep.

Two days after his arrival we packed up our backpacks and took a 10 hour night bus to Pucón Chile, the adventure capital of the lakes District of Chile.

Enough of the Back ground let’s get to the top 5 moments of our Pucón Adventure.

1. Hostal Limay: I would like to consider myself and economical person, not a cheap person… an economical person. My economical spirit resulted in me looking up every single price of every Hostel in Pucón Chile, and after looking at 10 different hostels, I found one that charged 4,500 pesos a night. Roughly 7 US dollars.
   

Devon and I arrived at Hostel Limay around 10:00 am December 18^th, put our stuff in a holding room while an employee prepared our room, sat down in the kitchen and started to talk to a girl using the computer. Approximately two minutes into our conversation the girl, Sheera?, informed us we were staying in an Israeli Hostel. Here is the numbers breakdown 25 Israelis 2 Americans. (I guess this could be considered a mini Birthright for two non Jewish Americans).

Although everyone seemed slightly stunned we were staying there, we were greeted with many smiles, some awkward looks, and lot of “Hello’s and “Hi’s” and open arms.

We really got to know our Israeli counterparts pre-gaming for a dance party in the heart of Pucón. During the “pre-game” Devon and I walked around and talked to virtually everyone staying in the hostel, we danced, laughed, and even tried to learn a few “important” Hebrew words. I can only remember one of the words which is meant to be used when approaching someone of the opposite sex that you have a slight attraction to, in English the word means I like you… or something along those lines. We spent the rest of the night partying with our Hostel buddies.

The 21^st of December marked the start of Hanukah, and we celebrated that with our new Israeli Possy, fun experience, dancing, singing, doughnut eating… good times.

2. Hiking Volcano Villarrica: So much fun! Pucón is famous for being right near an active volcano and if tourists cough up enough “plata” they can go on a 6 hour trek up to the top of the Volcano Villarrica.

5:30: Devon and I woke up, changed clothes, desperately tried to find my sunglasses, which are M.I.A. in Pucón, woke up our Israeli friends whom were coming along with us, grabbed our lunch, 8 pieces of bread, 2 pieces of cheese, half of an onion, quarter bottle of hot sauce and some soda crackers.

6:00: Changed into trekking clothes, filled backpack with lunch, camera, and sunscreen, packed into a Van.

6:35: Our group arrived at the base of Volcano Villarica, and began our ascent.

7:45: Our group of 8, two guides, 6 adventurers, finished the first, non snowy leg of the ascent.

9:00: After walking though snow for more than an hour, we sat down and had lunch…. 3 pieces of bread filled with cheese, some onions, and a lot of hot sauce.

11:00: Arrived at the sub-cumbre, the resting point right before the last leg of the climb, to determine if it is safe to climb to the top. The volcano was spewing tons of toxic gas. We waited for 30 minutes to see if the gas would clear up enough for us to safely climb to the top. Unfortunately the amount of gas coming from the caldera only got worse.

11:30: I watched an Israeli try to fight his guide because the guide would not let their group go on.

11:45: We began our descent. This was awesome, we put on an apron time thing, and slide down a series of man made slides carved into the snow covering the volcano.

1:45: After slip sliding, down the mountain and resting for a while, we finally made it to the bottom.

I was sad we didn’t make it to the peak of the volcano, but it was a fantastic day.

3. Trek Through Parque Nacional Huerquehue: After deciding not to climb Volcano Villarrica we decided to go on a long trek with our Israelí crew. We took an hour long bus ride to a huge national park and spent the entire day. 9:30-5:10 hiking through a very green and gorgeous forest. After trekking for 14km we saw five different lakes, two waterfalls, tons of trees I never knew existed, and a bunch of lizards. The hike was pretty difficult, but it was a great time to catch up with Devon and to get to know our Israeli friends. One fun fact: Flavor of Love is popular in Israel; I’m glad America only exports our finest television shows.

4. HidroSpeed: This activity is very hard to explain, but you hold onto a little plastic boat type thing, and swim/ ride down a river. We ended up going through a few class 2 and 3 rapids, and experiencing the power of rapids in a little handheld boat is something else. If you have a chance to go Hidrospeeding somewhere I definitely recommend it.

5. The Friends We Made: I know that sounds super middle school summer camp, or maybe High School Musical 4, but I loved getting to know everyone at our Hostel. I am truly going to miss some of the people we met here. Hopefully I can find some of our Israeli friends on Facebook… because that would just be awesome. How many of you have Israeli friends on Facebook… I’m not a Vegas betting man, but I’m going to go out on a limb and I bet an empanada de queso that most of you don’t.

Pucón it has been fun! Chiloé here we come!