Well, today we went mountain biking from Pucon. Had to fit in at least a few activities (we did hiking and biking) as would have felt guilty skipping every adventure activity on offer here (which covers just about most in existence). So mountain biking it was today. Had forgotten (from Tuscany in 2005) that we don´t go cycling often and that hilly places are not a good place to start. Scenery was great (especially the Ojos de Calburgua, so blue lakes and waterfalls… very photogenic), but let´s just say I´ll sleep well tonight. And I´ll be walking funny for a few days.
Last thing I thought worth mentioning is the “vulcano traffic light” installed on the roof of the tourist information centre. As I mentioned before, Pucon is near the (still active) Villaricca vulcano (at the base pretty much actually), so I guess they figured some sort of vulcano information device would be a good idea. It´s currently on green which I´m guessing is a good thing. If it hits red I guess things are going to get interesting around here very quickly. Or it will anyway for those tourists stupid enough to need a traffic light to tell them that the vulcano is going off. Didn´t work out what the orange was for. Perhaps I should´ve read the explanatory text that went with the traffic light. Silly tourist.
Huerquehue is a national park not far from Pucon where we are now. Walk was about 17kms and only between 800 and 1400m high (woohoo, no worries about altitude any more… although we weren´t quite sprinting up the hills I have to admit… with the lower altitude the temperature also seems to have picked up a bit). Apart from the views of the local vulcano (Villaricca), the park has some very scenic lakes and a tree variety called the Araucaria. Kind of like a cross between a palm tree and a pine tree with dinosaur scales. They get pretty big and it made for a nice change in the forest scenery. So did the trees actually which I wasn´t used to any more after 4 weeks above 3000m including Altiplano´s and deserts (not a lot of trees there). Which reminds me that Pucon is funnily enough about the closest thing I´ve seen to Switzerland (except with snow capped vulcanoes rather than mountains), although apparently Bariloche (in Argentina where we´re off to next), is even more so. Strange.
I guess you could be stuck in worse places, but it´s simply a case of me being extremely spoilt these days.
La Serena is a beach town at the southern end of the Atacama desert which we got to after driving south for a couple of days from San Pedro (enjoyed the bush camping on the way down actually). If you´re into lying on a beach, great. Otherwise, the town centre was ok and very, very Western/modern (after Bolivia anyway), but overal getting some stamps here was the highlight.
Santiago is just a big city. The biggest we´ve been to since London actually (5m+ people). Its centre is great for shopping but otherwise it was great to just be out of the tent and into a nice hotel for a few days. Did enjoy the farewell dinner (it was the end of the Cusco to Santiago leg for some of our fellow Dragoman travellers… doesn´t time fly), great food.
Also got quite a few chores done but somehow managed to again run out of time for internetting. Interesting how that happens when you´re travelling. Oh well. Posting some photos will eventuate at some stage.