My stay in Pucón was dedicated to adventure sports and extreme sensations. Apart from my first rafting experience, there was also the volcano. From Pucón, the main attraction is to climb the Villarrica Volcano, up to the crater! The volcano is active, permanently smoking, and is the most active in South America! It is said to be a 6-hour accessible-to-all climb, not very technical, but physically demanding. The height is of around 2900m, not very different from my 2600m workplace, where I do sports every day. This gave me enough confidence to not even question my physical condition and, as soon as I got to Pucón, to go directly to a tour agency to book it.
The climb is done with guides, in my group there were 3 guides, for around 18 people. The idea is to have different groups walking at different speeds, so that everyone can do the climb at its own pace. The climb starts at 1200m, in dust and rocky terrain until 1800m. At this point, snow starts and conditions change. It gets steeper and more dangerous as you can easily slip, fall and slide downhill. Soon the whole group started to divide itself into three different speeds. I was second almost all the way up, right behind the first guide, at a good pace. At a certain point of the climb you see the top, but as soon as you get there, you realize that it is a fake top, the actual crater is 500m more. This was the toughest part, because you are already tired from the constant and steep climb, your motivation drops considerably as you see the final goal quite far and the lack of oxigen from altitude becomes noticeable. At this point, I realized that my physical condition was not as good as I expected and it was damn tough to move forward. We finally stopped at 15 minutes from the crater to rest and eat something and from there only around six people actually went with the first guide. I went as well, my motivation was recovered as I saw the final objective pretty close, but lost my second position. Nevertheless, I managed to drag myself all the way up with them. We reached the 2847m in 4 hours and 15 minutes, quite far from the regular 6 hours! We passed two groups along the way, which had started the climb ahead of us. In the end, I realized that it was not my physical condition that was bad, it was the condition of the rest of the first group that was just too good!
Reaching the crater is a dream come true, not just for rewarding the climbing effort, but also for the amazing view over the surroundings and the thrilling sensation of looking into the crater of an active volcano. From up there you can see Pucón and Villarrica towns, three lakes and a lot of other snowed-top volcanoes! Unbelievable! Then you turn back and you have right in front of you this huge crater, expelling smoke with a strong sulfur smell and roaring from deep inside. There had been recent activity in the nearby volcanoes, which made the magma levels to be lower than usual, otherwise we would have been able to see lava inside the crater!
We spent around one hour on top, having lunch and getting ready for coming down. Around 80% of the equipment we carried was for the descent and this was definitely the most fun part of the day. We put on a lot of protective equipment (trousers, jacket, gloves, helmet) and they gave us a small plastic thing to sit on. The idea was pretty clear: slide downhill!! There were small "half-pipes" with a certain length, where we would sit and slide at a very interesting speed. At the end of each path we would walk to another one and do the same. After 7 or 8 different slides, we would be back at the snow start point! I didn't get the braking technique very well, which caused me shortcutting some turns, spinning, rolling, sliding again, running over other people and sometimes losing the track! We did the way down in half an hour, with bruises and snow all over, but it was excellent, the perfect end to a perfect day. Up there in the crater you feel how insignificant you are, face to face with one of the most powerful forces of Nature, hearing the deepest roars of Earth that could just turn you into ash in a blink of an eye. It can be frightening, but it also gives you an extraordinary inner peace, an ambiguous sense of protection...
If you have an area of intense volcanic activity, it is quite natural to think about hot springs. Pucón is not different, having the Villarrica volcano as the most active in South America. The region has an endless number of hot springs and they are one of Pucón's main attractions. I decided to give it a try and do it in the end of my stay, after all the exhausting activities. This turned out to be a good decision, as the weather got worse in the last days. I tried two different hot springs. Los Pozones are the most popular (cheap as well), where we went at night. It has a lot of people and it is a party place, with four thermal pools, at around 40ºC. It was excellent to relax and the place looked nice, but...
The next day it was cloudy and I heard about these other springs, called Termas Geométricas. The description was "a dream place in a forest" and since the weather was bad, I decided to go. It took us almost two hours to get there, it was a nice tour of the region, as we passed by two other towns in the way. The place was in fact out of this world. It was built by a chilean architect and won a prize for best ecologic project. It has 17 pools, distributed along a wooden pathway bridge, that goes up a beautiful gorge with a small river and waterfalls, between a humid green forest. There was less people as these springs were more expensive and less accessible. As soon as we got there, it started to rain. If the scenery was already amazing, the rain gave it an etherial touch, as the temperature difference created a thin mist above the pools. We spent the whole day there, moving from one pool to another, feeling the comfort of the 40ºC water on our body and the cold rain on our heads. "Trust me, it's paradise..."
