Chile, parte dos- Pucon and its amazingness

Wednesday morning, we checked into our hostel, El Refugio, which was definitely my favorite hostel out of all the ones I've been to. It was log-cabin style, with the whole inside of the house done in natural wood with a woodstove in the living room to heat the house. My bed was a top bunk tucked up in the eaves of one of the bedrooms and was the coziest most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. After we briefly explored and fell in love with the hostel, we all went to get breakfast (for BC readers- at the Agora Cafe. Not kidding.) When it came time to decide what to do for the day, we were slightly overwhelmed, because there were so many options.

The town, Pucon, is tiny- you can walk from end to end in about fifteen minutes. It's in this valley, next to a gorgeous lake on one side and an ACTIVE VOLCANO on the other, which was really cool. The volcano smokes every day and glows red at the top at night, which was really cool to see. One of our choices for excursions was to take an all-day hike that goes right up to the rim of the volcano and includes climbing the ice at the top with ice picks and full gear. Unfortunately, it was also $75 a person, so we decided that we should probably go for the cheaper options so we could do more than one without going broke. Our other options were canopying, kayaking, bodysurfing down the river, horseback riding, visiting the hot springs, and a few other things that are escaping me at the moment. Robin, Ali, and I decided to try horseback riding (it was one of the few that still had spots available that late in the day) but Catherine and Lis decided to stay in town and entertain themselves for the day instead.

After Robin, Ali and I grabbed lunch (and by lunch I mean a hamburger that was LITERALLY bigger than my entire head- I think I ate less than a quarter of it) and befriended a stray dog that looked like Wishbone minus the spots, we went back to the hostel to wait for the horseback riding people. Although much of what followed would be super sketchy in the States, we went with it and fortunately survived.

This random guy (who later introduced himself as Rodolfo) showed up in a beat-up old car with his dog and told us to get in, which we did, and proceeded to drive us into the mountains for about an hour. The view was gorgeous the entire way, and he told us we would have to stop at his house to pick up his riding gear. His house was beauuuuutiful and perched on the side of a mountain with nothing even remotely close to it and the most amazing view ever. He also had about six dogs running around that we got to play with while he got ready, and then we met up with a young couple who were also going to be our guides on the horseback riding trip. They were adorable- Gustavo was gorgeous and really nice (and from Buenos Aires, coincidentally, which explained why he was goodlooking- Chilean men can't touch Argentine men in the looks department) and Francisca/Francheska (I didn't catch her name when she introduced herself but it was something along those lines) was amazing and really friendly. We all went to the barn, played with the kittens and the dogs there, got our horses, and set off into the mountains with no gear, no instructions, and no helmets. Definitely would not work that way in the US but I kind of liked it.

My horse was the old slow one (which I think they assigned to me because I had never been riding before) and I named him Old Fart because in addition to being miles behind everyone else at times, he was a gas machine. Robin's horse would stop every two seconds to eat any type of vegetation he could reach, and would go off the path randomly, but other than that we did amazingly. We basically rode for five hours up this mountain on trails that were barely wide enough for a person to stand on, never mind a horse, and were hanging off the edge of the mountain at some points. Pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. After coming back down off the mountain and saying a semi-affectionate, semi-annoyed goodbye to Old Fart, we went back to Rodolfo's house for drinks and such. We hung out there for about an hour looking at Rodolfo's rodeo pictures (he's apparently one of the best rodeo competitors in Chile) and getting a ton of insider information on Pucon from Francisca. Gustavo and Francisca drove us back home later on and we met back up with Catherine and Lis for dinner. We went to a really cool vegetarian restaurant called Ecole for dinner and then rushed back to the hostel to get as much sleep time in our awesome beds as possible. Our roommate, Ron, who was from Israel, could not believe we were going to bed at 10 or 11 at night, but the beds actually were that amazing.

The next day, we grabbed breakfast at another cafe and bought a bunch of lunch supplies at the grocery store before heading off on a random hike our hostel had suggested. Catherine basically booked it up the mountain while the rest of us tried desperately to keep up without killing ourselves, (the horseback riding muscles were not happy with us) and then we had to slide from tree trunk to tree trunk down the side of a nearly vertical incline to reach the bottom of the waterfall we were trying to get to. The falls were beautiful but too cold to swim in, so we climbed back up and had a picnic lunch and befriended a wild horse while we were at it. We hiked back to town and decided to go to the lake, which had black sand beaches from the volcanic rock that were really odd to look at. We went in the water very briefly (lakes in the mountains of Chile= freezing) and got drinks at a bar on the beach.

That night, the girls and I (minus Catherine, who wasn't feeling well) decided to go to the hot springs up in the mountains for a few hours before dinner, which were really cool but not what I expected. A hotel had built three different pools around the ones we went to, so it looked more like an outdoor spa than a natural mountain spring, but it was fun nevertheless. We headed home after a while and went to try Peruvian food, which Francisca had told us was amazing and easily the best restaurant in town, but Catherine vetoed the rest of us and we ended up going to a seafood/pasta restaurant instead before going back and jumping in our beds for the last time.

So if you couldn't tell, Pucon was my favorite place that I've been to since being abroad. If you ever visit Chile, go there.
Also, why is no one answering my emails? Some of them are semi-important and need answering, but this seems to be the week to ignore Katie's questions. Let's fix that, people. Also, I miss you all, so it's nice to hear from you even if I didn't send you a mile-long list of queries. I hope everything is going well in the States/the random countries around the world that my friends are currently in!