Wow, these 10 days flew away like a rocket to the sky…
In Santiago we spent a whole day in a shopping mall and I bought finally a nice Desigual dress (waiting now for the next party to wear it ^^). Apart of this, we had some good food and drinks, compared Peruvian versus Chilean Pisco (both good, but different), I was confronted with the big differences between rich and poor and finally on Saturday we drove to Valparaíso - a lovely city with a stay in the best AirBnB I’ve ever seen (clean, great view, sparkling wine in the fridge, fully equipped, perfect).
Valparaíso is full of colorful houses on small hills and it is a very lively city with a lot of small Cafés and restaurants and many nice people. The weather was great, so we could just walk around, enjoy the sun, the food (Empananas!!), the views and one day on the beach in Viña del Mar - the city next to Valparaíso - where I got a horrible sunburn… One of the Chilean poet Pablo Nerudas houses (La Sebastiana) is located in Valparaíso, where we learnt a lot about him and his life. http://www.neruda.uchile.cl/ I didn’t know that poems can make me cry (in a nice way) before…
These days and even my weeks before were just perfect, therefore I had - after a long time - again a bad travel blues. I booked 2 more nights in a hostel in Santiago (La Casona Hostel), to recover and think about my next destination. It was the first time since beginning of October, that the ways of ALL people I met and traveled with, split. I never felt so sad, so happy and so thankful the same time.
But, as always, where there is something negative, there is something positive, too. I talked to one of the guys working in the hostel and then my next stop - Pucón - was defined. Acc. to the recommendation of Kati *thank you so much* I booked the hostel „French Andes“ (you have your own cabin to sleep in, bit more privacy which I enjoy tonight the third and last night) and took a nightbus from Santiago to Pucón (10h South direction). I still had 2 full days in Santiago, which I filled with walking around, eating more delicious Empanadas and other yummie things, sitting in the park and reading, watching people and joining a „Paranormal Santiago“ Fee Walking tour (what I understood was interesting, the Chileans have a very different dialect compared to Peru, Ecuador or Bolivia and speak super quick).
Arrived in Pucón (could be at home in the black forest), I decided to book the tour to the active volcano Villarrica (2847m) for the next day. I was quite disappointed when they told me the weather will be too bad on Saturday, but as I’m here for especially this tour, I decided to extend my stay for one more day. The first day I just spent in the nice garden of the hostel, talking to Paul, a guy from Ireland, reading, chatting, thinking and finally booking a bus ticket to the next destination: Bariloche/Argentina. The evening ended very funny with Paul, Estelle and Arno (French couple), nice talks and too much wine. After a good and long sleep I decided with Paul to visit the Hot Springs „Pozones“, which you can easily reach by public buses. We had a super relaxing afternoon together with Idi, a Brazilian girl, sitting in water of (estimated) 38°C during strong rain. As we enjoyed the company so much, we went - starving - to a wonderful steakhouse and had the best meat for weeks! After a short sleep (quite loud in the hostel and my alarm was set to 5:30am for the volcano tour), a quick breakfast and preparing sandwiches/snack for the day, I was picked up by the agency „Antü“ (super recommendable, thanks Kati again for the reco). The group got the whole equipment for this day tour: trousers, jacket, backpack with ice pick (a lot of snow and ice on the way), helmet (there can fall down some stones), mask (against the smoke of the volcano), shoes with a hard sole and spikes for the snowy way and equipment to slide down the way back. We were a group of 8 and 4 guides. Unfortunately a Brazilian couple had to go back early, two guides joined them, that the final group was existing of Joaquin (the boss of the agency and guide), Paris (other guide), the cousin of Joaquin, two older couples from UK and Germany and myself. It was really cool, as we all had the same speed and condition. On the breathtaking (in 2 ways) way up we had fog, clouds, sun, it was hot and cold, we did some stops to drink and snack and finally arrived at the summit of the volcano - what an experience!! Hiked from 1400m to 2847m altitude *proud* After watching into the crater, seeing lava coming up *impressive* and enjoying the 360° view over the clouds, we started to slide down on our asses - feeling like a child again, I loved it! Completely wet but super happy we arrived back in Pucón, where Joaquin invited us to a beer on his rooftop terrace - just an other perfect day. Please find my pics (soon) on Facebook!
As I still had to pay my tour, I had to go out of the hostel after the well doing shower and combined this with a walk to the lake Villarrica (finally the weather was better), eating an ice-cream on the black-sanded beach and being thankful for everything and every moment Chile gave me…
Tomorrow morning I leave to my last country of my trip - Argentina!! :-)