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My last blog entry from Chile! Tomorrow morning I´ll be getting the bus across to Argentina! I´ve been in Pucon for 4 days, I arrived early on Wednesday morning after getting a 12 hour night bus from Valparaiso. Pucon is a really pretty little alpine town with wooden buildings, a massive lake and a beautiful snowy volcano (volcan Villarrica). On our first day here we booked a trip to climb the volcano, it´s the number one tourist attraction here. In the evening we went to "check the equipment"...Whitney (my US travel buddy) and I, being stupid, thought it was just a hike so we were pretty scared to be given a massive bag containing huge snow boots, crampons, ice picks etc! The next day we got up at 4.15am to leave for the volcano at 5am. We got there and were told that the weather was too bad to climb (it looked ok to us amateurs but they said it would be too windy at the top) so we went back to Pucon, and back to bed! After a long snooze we hired some mountain bikes and went out in to the countryside on a huge bike ride...about 40km in total I think, my body still hurts thinking about it!! It was really nice though, we cycled to a really pretty waterfall, and met up with an English guy on the way that we´d met on a boat in Valparaiso! We wanted to cycle on to the next town where they have a really nice lake but we were just toooo tired! We got back to Pucon about 5pm, having stopped at a little remote roadside cafe for a "mote con huesillo", a disgusting looking but delicious tasting drink made from wheat and dried peaches! In the evening we went out for dinner and got chatting to a Chilean guy who persuaded us to go on to a club with him and his friends, which was like a little barn in the country! We were almost the only tourists there which was good! The locals here are so friendly, we left the club at about 4am and went looking for a taxi, and then a lovely Chilean couple just offered to give us a lift home which was really nice! Yesterday the weather was terrible, really windy and torrential rain, so we didn´t do much. It´s crazy as it was so hot and sunny the day before. Today, after much deliberating, we attempted the volcano climb again! The rest of the group dropped out as the weather didn´t look great, but as it´s our last day we decided to give it a go! It worked out really well other people dropping out as we had our own little private tour - me, Whitney and our guide Nicholas! It was soooo cold, at the bottom it was -3! We climbed almost to the top, but we couldn´t get right to the top as it was too windy and too much ice...so we´ll just have to imagine what the bubbling lava looked like! The wind was pretty scary, apprently it´s not usually that bad, but there were several times when I nearly got blown down the mountain!! In the winter when there´s more snow people snowboard down after they´ve climbed up, or even just slide down! Although we didn´t get right to the top it was still lots of fun (although pretty tough at times!!), especially the snowball fight we had half way down! It was nice to see some snow, it made me feel a bit more Christmasy! Tonight we´re going to go to the hot springs to soak our achey muscles :) They´re open 24 hours so we´re going to get on a night time tour I think. Tomorrow morning we leave for Villa La Angostura in Argentina, where I´ll be spending Christmas xxxx
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