Three action-packed days in Pucón!

As we may have indicated in past posts, we are running into a LOT of Israelis on our travels. In fact, at most of the hostels where we have stayed (all recommended to us by none other than Amit´s Israeli cousin, Eitan!), nearly all of the other guests are Israelis! So, as you would expect, we have made quite a few Israeli friends. One of the many benefits of this is that we get all the insider tips that Israelis pass to one another about traveling in South America... where to stay, where to eat, and what to do. So while we were in Bariloche, we were talking with one of our new friends, Sivan, and she told us about a great place to visit in Chile where we could hike up a volcano, raft down a whitewater river on a boogie board, and rapel down waterfalls, all in 3 days! This magical place was Pucón, only six hours away, and so a few days later, off we went with Sivan and her friend Hila to see about some adventuring! I have to apologize, though... we are a few days behind on our blog posts, and we have actually left Pucón now, but here is the tale of our three adventures in this great city. We arrived in Pucón on a Tuesday morning (one day behind Sivan and Hila) and found our friends walking around the (very small!) city. They had just purchased their three adventures, but they were beginning that same day, so we decided to relax for a day and join them for adventuring the next day. We visited one of the local travel agencies, purchased our three-day package, and prepared for our first adventure the following morning... hiking up Volcano Villarica. Now I have to admit, while the hike was extremely challenging, we did cheat a tiny bit. We woke up at 5 AM, donned our gear, took a bus to the bottom of the volcano, and then (along with most of the group) took a chairlist halfway up the volcano. Oops! But it was okay, because with two more days of adventuring in front of us, the last thing we wanted to do was kill ourselves on the first day and then limp through the remaining activities... and don´t worry, the remainder of the volcano hike was plenty challenging to earn our dinner! See the pictures to the right... we hiked on glaciers for most of the way up, and then enjoyed a high-speed SLIDE (similar to but much longer than the video you´ve seen on our blog) down the glaciers on the way back. At the top of the volcano, we were a bit disappointed not to see a huge pool of glowing, molten lava... but we were VERY impressed with 1) the unbelievably nasty sulfur smell coming out of the volcano, along with some dramatic white smoke, 2) the cool gurgling noise produced by the volcano every 10 minutes or so, and 3) the gorgeous views! All in all, a great first volcano experience! Hopefully we´ll have the chance to visit more volcanoes in the future and perhaps see some molten lava! On our second day of adventuring, we again joined our friends Sivan and Hila to raft down a local whitewater river (class II and III) with no raft!!! This activity is called body rafting, although they do give you a boogie board designed for the sport. This was something we´d never seen in the US (perhaps because it is a bit too dangerous for our lawsuit-loving society!) and was really a huge thrill. Class II and III rapids are not usually very exciting in a regular raft, but when you are at water level, riding through rapids with nothing separating you from the waves, swells, and huge holes but a little board, they are a BLAST! See more pictures to the right. The entire ride was only about 45 minutes, but with the bumps and bruises we got from hitting shallow rocks with our thighs and feet, we probably couldn´t take much more. After rafting, we took a short nap and then went to the grocery store with our friends to buy ingredients for a group dinner (menu: steak, mashed potatoes with onions, homemade babaganoush, sauteed mushrooms, salad, and ice cream cake for dessert!). While we have been to some great restaurants here in South America, this may have been one of the best meals of our trip! On day 3, our friends left for a multiday trek in the area while we took off on our rapeling adventure. The rapeling trip took us to a local river/creek where we had the opportunity to rapel down three waterfalls and hike through beautiful, lush canyons filled with water up to our waist. It felt like we were in a secret rain forest... absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I am not going to go into much detail on this activity for a few reasons. First, we don´t have any pictures yet. The guides take pictures of you during the trip and then burn a picture CD and provide it to you the next day. We had scheduled to leave Pucón that night, however, and so we had to ask some new Israeli friends we met in Pucón to pick up the CD on our behalf and send it to us in the US or Israel (whichever would be easier). The other reason I won´t talk much about the adventure is that the trip took MUCH longer than expected and we were so close to missing our evening bus that I almost had a heart attack... so too many details bring back unneeded anxiety :)! As soon as we have pictures, we will post them and you can see how beautiful and exciting the experience was! Overall, our sidetrip to Pucón was a HUGE success! These adventures were well worth the detour into Chile, and positioned us to travel a bit further north to enjoy the Chilean beaches before returning to Argentina for the Mendoza Annual Wine Festival! Several more posts are in the works... so look forward to more updates from Amit & Dena´s Great Adventure!!! Love, Dena (& Amit)

Our hike up Villarica The stinky but cool gas coming out of the top of the volcano The gorgeous, rewarding view from the top of the volcano Amit and the view! Amit sliding down the volcano Our friends Sivan, Hila, Roi, and Amit (from left to right) after our delicious, homecooked dinner The body rafting group (we are in yellow helmets, Sivan is in white, and Hila is in blue) Sivan, Dena, and Amit getting ready to go down the rapids The two of us going down a small rapid The whole group going down a bigger rapid (on the biggest rapids the guides said it was critical for safety to stay very close together... as you can see, we are very close together!)