Cost pp: bus La Junta to Chaiten 7500
Our bus to Chaiten left at 8am and was a van. It was still misty with a very early morning feel when we got up and went searching for the bus office. There were 3 others on the journey and more we picked up on the way, the bags all got dumped into the rear seat. The scenery was beautiful and the trip took about 3 hours, half way we changed to a small bus and continued on. When we arrived in Chaiten the bus took us straight to the ferry office to buy our tickets then took us on a tour around the town. It was a very sad tour...
Chaiten was evacuated in May 2008 because a nearby volcano threatened to spill itself over the town. This is indeed what happened and the lahar pushed itself along the old path of the river then diverted it pushing a new path straight threw the middle of the town and out into the bay. No lives were lost but we would estimate that about 20% of the houses were destroyed or damaged. All the services such as hospital, fire, school etc remained untouched. Later we went for a walk through it by ourselves and it seemed quite weird to walk through a town that looked like it should have people walking in the streets. Some shops still had equipment and furniture etc still sitting in them. The mud that flowed through the town was in places about 18" deep and huge piles of it sat on the sides of the streets where they had been cleared. Previous to the eruption about 5000 people lived there now only 150 remain.
For more info copy and paste this into your browser http://geology.com/volcanoes/chaiten
