I climbed a volcano!
Okay, it's been a while since I've updated. I'm going to skip over last week because it was pretty much just same old classes and hanging out. Good times. This past weekend was our first group trip (all the gringos) to Pucon, a town with a lake and a volcano about 2.5 hours northeast of Valdivia. We lucked out HARD CORE with absolutely perfect weather (sunny and 70 everyday), so we were able to take full advantage of our time there. Here's how it went down...
We left EARLY Saturday morning (that was interesting), and arrived in Pucon just in time to go to a tiny Mapuche museum (the Mapuche are the native tribe around here) and then have a HUGE almuerzo. After that we headed off to the volcanic caves. They were cool and I actually learned quite a bit seeing as how it was my first time in a lava tube, but I definitely prefer limestone caves. Turns out that because of all the volcanicness (I think that's an actual geologic term) the caves are incapable of sustaining life which, in turn, means no bats, stalagtites, stalagmites, nada. Still fun though. I got to wear a hard hat.
After that we wondered around the forest nearby and ALL of us jumped together on a big cable bridge suspended over a tiny gorge. Fortunately we wasted enough time doing that stuff to see the sunset over Pucon and the lake from the side of the volcano. It was awesome.
Once we got back to Pucon we pretty much just had dinner (again, a TON of food) and then went to the bar, but only for a little bit. We were pretty tired so we turned in relatively early. Good choice.
On Sunday we had breakfast and the headed off to something called "Los Ojos de Caburga." Turns out it is an area in the forest where there are a bunch of waterfalls and for some reason the water is super blue. It was beautiful, we pretty much just hiked around a bit and enjoyed the view.
After that we had another HUGE almuerzo (really good salmon) and then Danielle, Theo, Lindsey and I wandered around Pucon for pretty much the rest of the day finding a cabaña, getting our hike up the volcano lined up for Monday, and getting food (it took forEVer). When we finally got back to our cabaña at 10:30 we made some spaghetti, had some good boxed wine, and went to bed early.
In case you haven't figured out, on Monday we climbed the volcano. It was pretty much awesome. It was a pretty hard hike, straight up the side of a volcano, but it wasn't horrible (although I think some would beg to differ). AND it was even more fun because we had a bunch of mountain climbing gear including what seemed like fire fighter pants and jacket, a helmet, CRAMP-ONS, and a PICK AXE. Haha. OH and we had a gas mask, but we didn't end up using it. I don't know how else to organize this, so I'm just going to list the highlights...
1) Perfect weather, no clouds at all
2) We looked into the volcano and saw LAVA (the only place in the world where you can do that)
3) Our group included some funny British people and a drill sargent of a guide
4) We had to dodge a rock rolling down the side of the volcano towards us(it was SO funny)
5) I got to use cramp-ons, a pick axe, and wear another helmet
6) This is the BEST part... The way we got down the snowy part of the volcano (relatively half the hike) was by sliding down on our butts and using the pick axe as a break. Now THAT is an extreme sport. It was SUPER fun but also pretty scary.
Ooh, I just did my metric conversions! For those of you who care, the volcano is 2840 meters high (9317 feet) and we started at 1500 meters (4920 feet), climbing a total of 1340 meters (4390 feet). Not too shabby.
So that was the weekend. It was really really nice. If you have facebook you should definitely check out my pictures. I'm going to post a few in my journal, but I think I took around 100, so there's alot more to see.
Okay, I'm DONE with this. Peace.