Pucon - Day 1 [11/09]

On Thursday night, all the ISA kids met up outside the Teatro Municipal in Vina to hop on a bus for our weekend excursion to Pucon. The trip was entirely organized by ISA and already included in the cost of the program. Provided was the bus ride, lodging in the cabanas, breakfast, and the tour on the first day.

The bus ride from Valparaiso to Pucon is about 12 hours; so we got on the bus at about 9 p.m. and got to Pucon at about 9 a.m. This is a pretty good bus ride since you can just sleep all the way down.

When we got to Pucon, we had some time to relax before reserving and paying for the optional activities the next two days and taking our tour of the region. Unfortunately, one of the cabanas of 8 had been replaced by a cabana of 3 and a cabana of 5, and weren't ready when we got there.

ISA had made some arrangements for option activities for Saturday and Sunday. Among them were hiking the Volcano, white water rafting and canopy (or zip-line). Origionally, I had wanted to do all three activities, but due to the situation with my hand and it not being able to get wet, I decided to only do the Volcano hike and canopy. But more about those later.

After we had a chance to buy food at the grocery store for whichever meals we wanted over the next couple of days, we started our tour of the region, which included various waterfalls, a lake, and thermal baths.


[Salto Palguin; this one we only got to see from rather far away, but it was impressive nonetheless]

We continued on the bus to Salto La China, which was apparently named after a cow named "La China" who fell off the waterfall. We're not sure this is true...


[Me, Sarai, Sarah, Danielle, and Katelyn with the waterfall in the background]


[Salto La China]

All of these Saltos took a little hiking to get to, so make sure to wear proper shoes so you don't end up like this!



Continuing with the theme of water, we went to The Lago Caburgua, a lake in the region where some very famous people have houses, such as the President of Chile (Michelle Bachelet) and Pamela Anderson. The water in the lake is higher in the spring and winter, but in the summer, the pathway goes out much further and the water is very shallow. This water is also slightly heated by the volcanic activity, so it is a little warmer than surrounding lakes. But it was still cold.


[walking down as far as we could]


[not great weather, but still beautiful]


[the brave souls that went out into the water...]

"Ojos de Caburgua" and the "Laguna Azul" were next on the schedule. Both were incredibly blue in color, which was very hard to capture on camera.


[Ojos de Caburgua]


[Played around with my camera settings to make it more blue... but it was very pretty!]


[Laguna Azul]

Finally, we made it to the thermal baths. The best was definitely saved for last. Lizette had told us that these baths were more natural than other ones in the area, and it seemed that way. There were five baths that varied in temperature, heated by the volcanic activity, that were all in rock formations next to a mountain river. On such a cold day, it was really nice to sit in the warm baths and just relax. Although, it was a bummer that I had to try to keep my hand out of the water the whole time that I was there... It was also nice that the river was right next to the baths. In slight Swedish style, some of us would dunk ourselves in the cold water and try to get back the the hot water as soon as possible. Although, that was also kind of scary and hard to do with just one hand that would go underwater...


[Beka, Brittany, Sarah and Isaac in the hottest of the baths...]

Coming soon: Day 2 or "the Hiking of the Volcano"