Pucon

For easter weekend I decided to pack up my backpack and head to Pucon for some outdoor adventure. Pucon is a small town about 5 hours south and east (towards the mountains) from Concepcion. It is famous for having just about every outdoor sport imaginable and a smoking, sometimes lava spewing volcano only miles away.

I arrived in Pucon on Thursday night and the next morning at breakfast I met another gringo, David and we decided to go rafting. David is a volunteer for the Peace Corp in Paraguay and he was on vacation with his family. We rafted on the Alto Rio Trancura and had a ton of fun, and I must say that the American raft beat out the Brasilian raft in the fact that none of us fell out.

I came to Pucon not knowing what I would do, with such options as rafting, hiking, mountain biking, climbing, and thermal baths. David had climbed the Volcano Villarica the day before I arrived, so I decided to follow suit and sign up for the Volcano climb.

I climbed Volcano Villarica on Saturday. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but we hiked half way up through cinder and the other half on top of snow/ice/glacier. We even had to use crampens and an ice pick!!

I had a ton of fun and actually met 2 other Americans that are also studying abroad in Concepcion but in a different University.

My weekend trip to Pucon was a great time, but unfortunately my Spanish suffered a little, since I pretty much only spoke English in Pucon, but it was definitely worth it.