pucón

on the bus ride from temuco to pucón, when not intently working away at my crosswords, i began to notice a definite change of scenery. things started to get more rustic, scenic, eventually, i had to stop working on my crosswords. pucón is situated between a horrifyingly still lake and a supposedly perfectly conical volcano. during the summer, it's a tourist haven, filled to capacity with americans and vacationing chileans. in the winter, there's a lot of snowboarding and skiing types. in the middle of a rainy week in autumn, it's hard to find anyone really.

but i was there!

it was nice being the only tourist in an adorable, quiet village with significantly developed tourist infrastructure and no one to sell it to. i got to stay at a lovely hostel and paid practically nothing to have a house to myself. painfully high hostel guy even let me use the owners' bikes to discover pucón free of charge. plus, i got to stumble upon incredible lakes, free of people renting paddle-boats.


the downside was that i never saw volcano villarrica, the draw for a lot of people. no worries, i hear it's been around for a while and isn't going anywhere. the rain also marred a hiking expedition to parque nacional huerquehue, but i subbed it with some serious (for me) biking and spent some quality time with río trancura. i also saw where the volcano would have been had there not been a gang of clouds kicking it.


stumbling upon the río trancura during a brief respite of rain allowed me to chance upon some stupendous scenery, making me feel, as i did many a time on my trip, very lucky (to be alive, to be in chile, to be a jedi). i caught the sun smacking the river and the andes and watched clouds rapidly climbing mountains until the beauty threatened to make me pass out.




while biking back to my hostel, i missed me turn and had to double back, only to look up and see a massive rainbow stretching across the mountain range and all of pucón. i felt like it was science, presenting a little gift just for me. "hey sean, sorry you didn't catch the volcano, check out this wicked bow," said science. "thank science," said sean. this picture does not do it justice.