Welcome back to The World in a Nutshell! We left Barriloche mostly as planned - if we had planned to start nearly two hours late thanks to bus delays - and arrived in Valdivia, Chile, with little in the way of drama. The bus ride provided us with some more beautiful scenery and the odd stop at immigration which involved a lot of luggage unloading and a sniffer-dog or two! And before we knew it we were there, in a new city, in a new country with no money and no where booked to stay! Currently in our top 3 things we like most about traveling, especially when it's already 10 o'clock in the evening! Luckily we found ourself a nice little hostel nearby with a room for the night, checked in, and headed off in search of a cashpoint! After a few frustrated attempts we came to realise that Banco Escardo would not accept our cards so found and alternative and we were all set!
Breakfast the next morning was again an experience, sat around a huge table in the dark of a powercut chatting with a very friendly Chilean family whose house had been totally destroyed by a Tsunami in 2010, let us just say that a certain person whos spanish is still rather limited may have been the butt of most of the jokes that morn
ing!
The day was spent wandering around the port, admiring the HUGE sealions that seemed happy to put on a display right on the quay, checking out the local markets and eating some local casserole in a very local restaurant! Before boarding a bus to Pucon that evening.
Our first night in Pucon was spent in another lovely hostel run by Eric who swept us off the street outside the bus station and offered us a room for a bargain (the only upside of arriving late in the day if hostels are desperate to fill rooms) and the next morning found us both very reluctant to leave and head down to the local campsite for what will probably be our last chance to live super-cheap under canvas for a while! Heads definitely ruled hearts that morning! Then it was off to town to book ourselves onto a Volcano trek - it's a tourist thing apparently - for the next day as the weather looked set to be perfect! Rising shortly after 5 we left the sun in Pucon and started our summit attempt up through the clouds surrounding Volcano Villarrica with all fingers crossed that luck would be on our side and the sun would burn off the clouds and allow us to reach the top.... It seems we were not to be that lucky and halfway up we were forced to turn around (along with the 300 other tourists all attached to various tours) and return to base as the weather was getting worse, not better. Bad times! A consolation beer did little to make us feel better about missing out on this full experience, especially as we had to fork out almost full cost for our failed attempt! The only real consolation, the weather stayed poor around the Volcano for the rest of the day, and only got worse over the next couple of days.
After a well deserved, but slightly regretful, lie-in the next morning we headed out to the local national park for a day walk. Unfortunately the joy of Chilean buses left us with 3 hours to do a 6 hour walk... hmmmm.... and as neither of us was much up for a jog we decided to amble the first part, visit a few nice miriadors and waterfalls then head back in time to get the last bus back to town. This I feel was good preparation for Bolivian buses as they crammed over 50 hikers onto a minibus for the trip back to town, cosy! The icing on the cake, rush hour traffic made a 45 minute trip into a 2 hour one! Great! Friday brought the rain! Pretty much the first rain we have seen since arriving back in January and it seemed ready to make up for it! For once luck was on our side and it held off long enough for us to pack up camp and dump our bags at the bus station ready for that evening's bus trip! After a relaxed day of coffee and Barritos for lunch we settled into our semi-camas ready for the 12 hr stint to Valparaisso!
Just a footnote, food on Argentine buses is certainly superior to that we have experienced on Chilean buses so far. Doesn't bode well for our 24 hr bus trip this evening!
