Pucon - Day 2 [11/10]

On the second day of our trip to Pucon, I decided to hike the volcano Villarrica. The hike had been presented to us as a 5 hour hike up and a 3 hour decent. Considering myself a pretty good hiker, I wasn't expecting something I couldn't handle. I was also excited since Villarrica has a lava pool in the crater which can be seen, as well as a point much higher than the surrounding area, providing a view of Pucon and the surrounding region. I was pretty excited.

At 7:10, a bus from the tour company came and picked up our crew at the cabanas and took us to the tour office to get geared up. The gear, the transportation to and from the volcano, and the guide were all included in the price of 35.000 pesos, or $70 USD. After we had on our stuff (snowpants, legwarmers, hiking shoes for the snow, jackets, and helmets), we got on the bus and headed to the National Park Villarrica, where the volcano is located, to start out ascent at about 1,500 m (4,500 feet).


[the group about ready to start...]

Although you can take a ski lift starting at that point that will take you about 1/3 of the way up, it costs and extra $14 USD and we wanted to be tough, so we walked. We started out at a good pace, and surprisingly there was still lots of snow as we were walking up. We took our first long break right after we met up with the people that had taken the lift, about an hour and a half into the trek.


[beginning of the hike]


[first break... took a volcanic rock as a souvenir...]

The ascent was no easy task. We would basically walk for anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour without a break at a very high altitude, walking basically up the side of the mountain as if there was a staircase. We stayed mainly as one group until we got about 3.5 hours into it, where a group of about 8 broke away from another three of us, while another four were still further behind. While the first group kept trekking along, us in the second group took a little slower paces and stopped more often. Although stopping for long wasn't an option, since the cold caught up to you quick.


[a fake smile and snot frozen to my nose]

To be honest, this was the most physically demanding thing that I have done. Already four hours into it, my legs were sore and aching, feeling like they couldn't take another step, my head began to hurt from the altitude, and I thought about turning back quite a bit. I kept thinking that I had payed 70 dollars to physically exhaust myself, quiet possibly get sunburned, and just see white snow and white clouds for hours! But, I knew that I had to get to the top cause I am just not a quitter.

Unfortunately, the top wasn't any better. The weather was really bad, and the entire summit was covered in clouds, so there wasn't a view of the valley. As we got up, the winds had also changed and all of the sulfuric gases (since it is an active volcano) were blowing into our faces and we could barely breathe. Although we had planned to stay up there and wait for the clouds to blow away, we went down right away because of the conditions. The conditions also lessened the visibility, so that made it hard following our guide who seemed to want to get down in a hurry, without thinking about our lack of experience with mountaineering...


[our not so nice guide who smoked cigarettes while climbing a volanco...]

We were disappointed to say the least. And exhausted. And we still had to get down. When it's good weather, you can slide down the slopes on your bottom, but when you can't see where you are going, it's dangerous and they don't let you do it. So, we didn't get to slide until we were fairly far down.

At the end of the trek, I still wasn't sure how I felt about it. Two days later, I am really glad that I did do it, mainly to say that I hiked a volcano and got to almost 3,000m or 10,000 feet!! But, if anyone asks me whether they should hike the Villarrica Volcano, I would tell them that if they are ready to hike uphill for 7 hours and downhill for 3, with the chance of not seeing anything but white scenery and the people you are with for 7 hours, no pretty view and no cool volcano crater, then go for it!! Otherwise, there are lots of other cool things to do in Pucon.

Check out all my pictures from the hike here.

And the pictures from the first day here.