Pucon, Chile

Pucon is a small town in the Chilean Lakes District that is on the edge of a big lake, and within sight of Vulcan Villarica. Villarica is a beautiful snow-capped volcano that still has some occasional smoke and fire.

In the summertime, Pucon is a tourist mecca... both Chilean and foreign tourists flock here for the sun, the beaches, the hiking, biking, and whitewater rafting. We saw some pictures of Pucon in high season, and it reminded me of Key West at Christmas time (small town, streets jammed with tourists).

This time of year, it is definitely off season... Hostals and restaurants and stores are empty. But we were blessed with a spectacular run of weather--about 4 days of blue skies and sunshine.

Though we were greeted off the bus by women hustling hostals, we opted to take one from the Lonely Planet, and got the cheapest price for a room we've had so far. Hostal M@yra wasn't anything special, but it was close to town.

After nosing around the tourist information office and a couple of travel agents, we opted to actually pay for a guided hike up to the Cani Forest. This is a private reserve that some individuals bought up to save the ancient Aruacania trees from the logging companies.


The reason for paying vs doing a self-hike, was that the price included a minivan transport higher up the mountain than you can reach by public bus. AND it included a guide (which turned out to be a good thing... we'd have never found the right path up there!)

It was a pretty long hike, but the scenery was lovely. After 4 hours of uphill hiking, we scrambled nearly straight up for several hundred feet to reach the 'mirador' at the top of the mountain.

Looking Up at the Mirador
From there we could see 360 degrees around us and could see 4 volcanoes (Villarica, Quetrupillan, Lanin, Llaima), including one over the border in Argentina.

Sherry At the Mirador, Villarica in the Background

Part of the walk took us right through the middle of the volano's ancient crater, by a lagoon called Laguna Negra (Black Lagoon). It was fantastic.


We saw trees that our guide told us were close to 2,000 years old! The trees are huge, but like trying to take pictures of big waves, the scale just doesn't show in the photos.


The Unique Leaves of the Araucania Tree

Dave Standing on a Fallen Tree
We only had 3 couples on the hike, and a young Chilean forestry student who spoke a little english as our guide. For once, Dave and I were not last on the hike. There was a Brazilian couple who obviously didn't do much hiking, and they were really struggling.

Our Guide, Guido
We were slowed down so much by waiting for the Brazilians that we barely made it down to the pickup point before dark. We walked the last half mile in the dark. We hadn't imagined being out so long, so we didn't even have a flashlight. (Fortunately someone else had one).

And we were amazed that the minivan was not waiting for us... the last thing that 'Max' the van driver said to us as we got out was "I'll be waiting RIGHT HERE no matter how late you are."

But Max had gotten tied up and sent another van driver, who didn't know exactly where the pickup point was. He'd driven by where he thought we should be, when we were supposed to be there, and not seen anyone. It took us 45 minutes standing exhausted and hungry in the cold and the dark to finally get picked up. Fortunately our guide had a cell phone and Max's phone number.

We finally made it back to town about 8pm!