We didn't have reservations for a hostel in Pucon so we just started walking from the Bus station and a young lady came up to us on the street to tell us her mom had a hostel which had room if we wanted to go there. It was perfect, we both took hot showers and collapsed into bed.
The next morning I got up and went for a run through town. There was a beautiful beach on the lake to run along and I found the campground that we eventually used that night. There is a smoking volcano right next to the town and no one seemed to be worried. When I asked if it does that all the time they said yes!!! Yikes!!!
This was our camp Thursday night.
Check it out a smoking volcano!!!
Well, Pucon was cool but very ritzy and we just wanted to get into the mountains so we bought some food, a fuel canister (side note shout out to Glen Wallace - the stove is AWESOME!), a blanket and caught a bus to Huerquehue National Park. This picture is of our first campsite at Parque Huerquehue. We rested up here for the 20km hike we were planning for the next day to the hotsprings we had heard about on the opposite side of the park.
We started hiking at 7:30am that morning, we wanted to get going before the sun came out full force.
As we hiked it was like a botanical garden or maybe just Matt and Lilias garden ;-) there were ground fucsias and many other unknown beautiful plants. And as we climbed higher the forest was filled with monkey tail trees - soooo.... cool ;-) Just like you said, Hong !
It was a grueling trail up and down but we just kept thinking of the hotsprings at the end to keep us going.
Here the trail turned in to a road and we didn't know if we were going the right way or not but we finally made it to the hot springs and it was wonderful.
Ahhhh...
The next day was just relaxing, soaking and resting the body. The hotsprings run into the near by river - Rio Blanco - so you could soak and then jump in to the freezing cold water. They also had pools along the river that were warm from the mixture of the river and the hotsprings. Bellissimo!!!
Camp was not even 20 feet from the springs - in the middle of the night I got cold so I got out and went to soak for a little bit then climbed back into the tent.
The next day - Sunday Jan 22- we started our hike back out of the park but we had heard from some other campers that there was a woman who sold zapapillos (fried sweet bread) to the passing hikers. Her house was about 15 minutes off the main trail, so we took a detour and went to check it out. There we met Senora Pilar and her husband Juan who lived on a small peice of private property with in the park. They had a beautiful home, garden and yard. We asked if we could stay the night and they said yes, making us fresh zapapillos and hot tea,to make us feel welcome.
Here is our tent on their manicured lawn.
Great ideas for the back yard when I get home.
Relaxing on their beautiful front porch
The next morning, Senora Pilar told us that Juan had gone into town and if we wanted to follow his tracks it would be shorter than going out through the park. We both hate backtracking and were up for an adventure, so we decided to take our chances and head down the valley, following Juan's tracks (actually, it was his horse's tracks).
Some times it was really hard to follow his tracks but we became expert horseshoe trackers.
Other times the trail was easy to follow and we knew to just keep going to the lake.
We got to the lake but never found the town or Juan. After a swim in the lake and some lunch we got back on the trail which soon became a road. We were lucky to catch a ride with a middle aged shipping executive and his hard-rock loving 10 year old son to Pucon, listening to American Idiot and Kiss blaring from the car stereo. We were back in civilization.(for more photos check out our web album)
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