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We got to Pucon at 9.30am and jumped off the bus straight into a taxi. We handed over the address to the hostel and travelled the almighty distance of 20 metres to the front door. After a little chuckle and a kind taxi driver that didn´t ask for payment we rather embarrasingly arrived. We had a very warm reception from the owner before another panic episode as Mike realised that he had left his bank card on the bus, which had since departed town. After realising it was too late to do anything about except for wait for news from the bus company we met John and Lucy, brother and sister from London. We bought some lunch to take with us and caught the local bus to Playa Blanca, a nice beach on a lake. I got my faithful sponge rugby ball out for some fun and went for a swim in the surprisingly warm water. It was a beautiful location with forested mountains all around. That evening Lucy, John and I were sized up for our gear that we needed to climb the volcano the following morning. Lucy cooked us a tasty steak fajita dinner and after a couple of beers we hit the bed early ready for the 6am start!
Emerging a little hungover i got up at 6am ready to meet at 6.30am. Then after a rather frustrating delay we headed to the volcano in a number of minibuses. The weather had been poor the 2 days previously so the volcano trekkers from the previous days were stacked up meaning in total there were about 120 people that were climbing that day. We started our ascent at around 9am (cheating slightly by taking the ski lift up the first 400m vertical metres). From here it was a case of walk up the mountain and keep up with whichever guide/group you could. Lucy, John and I started about 20 people from the back, but before long had picked a guide who's pace suited us and upwards the 3 of us marched with a Swiss girl and Swedish girl who were tagging with us. The volcano is meant to be a 5 hour trek to the top, but we headed upwards at quite a pace and over took just about everyone by the time we got to the halfway point for a break. It had been a hard trek so far and was very steep. At halfway we put our gloves on and grabbed our ice axes because it was walking up a glacier from here to the top. The going was even tougher now because we were amongst the lead groups which meant there was no footprints to walk in, so little slides became quite regular but within 20 more minutes we were clear of everyone and had a clear route to the top. After a solid 2.5 hour climb we had a good 45 minutes at the top of the 2750m mountain all to ourselves before the next group arrived and the view was awesome. More impressive than the view though was the glacier that covered the top of the mountain except were the steaming bowel of the volcano had metled away the ice and was home to the hot steam puring out. There was no lava to be seen but it was still very impressive! Once we had all filled our memory cards with photos we put on our snow gear we had carried up and fot ready to slide back down on a tray, yes we were sledging down past all the other groups.
As we were now very aware of how steep the volcano was we somewhat nervously started to slide down on our bums. There were small channels that had been carved out by bums over the previous weeks so just like bobsledging we zoomed down the mountain side, making light work of the slopes. It was great fun, and after the first couple of hundred metres we just about plucked up enough courage to slide down without the ice axe acting as a brake. We got to the bottom around 2pm when it dawned on us that we would have to wait for enough people to get down to fill a mini bus before we were going anywhere....at 6pm we finally made it back to the hostel.
Mike and I cooked some pasta and we said our goodbyes to Lucy and John. I headed to the bus station to book my ticket to Bariloche, but Mike had decided he was to return to Santiago to try and sort out his bank cards (although not quite sure). With a bus booked for the morning i had a cheeky beer in town with a couple of others from the hostel. Not everyone was quite so keen for a beer though as a couple of people were ready for bed after it took them 7 hours to reach the top of the volcano! John, Lucy, Emma and Swiss girl good hustle!!
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