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Yesterday morning (Friday) we were up bright and early and enjoyed bread, cheese, jam and scrambled egg for breakfast before boarding the bus. We left Pichilemu around 8.30am and headed straight to the town of Santa Cruz, where we spent some time in the Museo de Colchagua before wandering into the town and the Plaza de Armas. We were back on the bus heading towards Pucon at 11.30am. The rest of the day was spent travelling south on the PanAmerican highway, stopping every couple of hours at service stations to stretch our legs.
We finally arrived in the Alpine-like resort of Pucon at 8.30pm. Our first stop was at the Aguaventura shop to test our equipment for our volcano hike. Eventually we arrived at our hostel, which was amazing. It was like we were guests at somebody's house. We had a triple room with Bella. We headed to the supermarket and spent the rest of the evening watching Psycho with a pizza. Once in our room we sunk into our gorgeous beds, before gossiping till around 2.00am - all too aware that we had to get up in just 4 hours! Once we had finally turned off the light, we heard the eerie sound of an air-raid siren - no-one in the hostel stirred so we went back to bed! Apparently it is used to alert the fire brigade!
This morning we were rudely awoken by our alarms at 6.00am and heard rain outside, meaning our volcano hike was probably cancelled. Still, we got up to check and found no-one awake in the hostel - just someone snoring very loudly! We decided to head back to bed, Sarah rising when we heard voices at around 6.30am - the hike was definately off, so we went back to sleep, re-setting our alarms for 8.30am so we could go on the 11.00am rafting trip. Unfortunately Laura woke everyone up at 11.00am!
We panicked but got ready and walked into town, managing to book onto the 3.00pm trip . We headed for a coffee and some apple biscuits in a cafe before browsing the shops. We returned to the hostel to get ready then at 3.00pm we joined the trip. We took the bus, with 2 german guys and the crew, the journey to the river taking around 20 minutes. Once there, we doned our wetsuits and life jackets (argh!) and were taught a few things about the raft, Sarah being used to demonstrate how to pull someone aboard the raft after falling into the water. We climbed in the raft and spent a bit of time practicing the moves and once we were ready we apprehensively hit the grade 4 rapids. Although scary, it was fantastic negotiating the white water, shouting cerveza every time we had successfully completed one. We had to leave the raft once to walk round a grade 6 rapid, Sarah and Bella jumping off the rocks back into the water and onto the raft whilst Laura chickened out and walked round. Once we had finished the course we headed back to Pucon and rushed for some food (empenadas and soup) before heading out with the rest of the group to Los Pozones hot springs. We enjoyed bathing in the various warm, mineral pools with a glass of wine, but after a couple of hours we had had enough and had turned wrinkly in the water! At 10.50pm we headed back to the hostel and hit the sack ready for another attempt at the volcano in the morning.
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