Our Great Adventure: Pucon Day 199 05/04/2015

The weather was much improved when we got up with the sun shining and blue skies. We'd decided to go to Pucon for the day and headed to the bus station to catch the bus, a bargain at 500 pesos (c50p) each way. We had 30 minutes to wait so popped to a nearby cafe for breakfast. The 30 minutes went very quickly and we ended up taking our toast and drinks with us to consume on the bus. The journey from Villarrica to Pucon is very pleasant with the road running alongside the lake shore for most of the time. We arrived just after 10am to a customary Chilean "early" morning quiet town, had a walk around the town centre and beach, popped into tourist office to see what was on offer then stopped at a cafe for very refreshing fresh juice. Pucon is set by the lake at the foot of Volcan Villarrica and draws in the tourists all year round. The town is very well manicured and felt very different to the more rustic charm of Villarrica although both have a strong Germanic influence. After drinks we wandered down to the pier and went out on a boat trip for an hour. The commentary was all in Spanish but it was good to get the views, especially of the volcano as it started to get a bit more active pumping out huge plumes of grey smoke. As we were strolling back down the main street we passed CNN news reporting on the activity and the siren went off with hoards of people coming out on to the street all looking towards the volcano. It wasn't obvious why it had gone off although we did notice that the fire engines where out of the stations as if in preparation for something. It didn't appear to be anything significant but we decided to head back to Villarrica and avoid any potential traffic delays if anything materialised. The traffic on the way back was quite heavy with people driving to the many volcano viewing spots! Back at Villarrica we went for lunch at the cafe we'd been to yesterday and had scrambled eggs and toast; we both fancied an omelette and this was the nearest thing we could find on the menu. After lunch we went back to the hostel to do we a bit more planning for when we get to Puerto Natales later in the month. We'd like to go trekking in Torres del Paine National Park where we'd been to when we came to Patagonia about 14 years ago. It's getting very close to the end of the session here and some of the refugios are closed which impacts the treks you can do. After a bit of head scratching we decided to wait to get to Puerto Natales before we book, that way we'll also have a better feel for what the weather forecast will be like. We'd seen a nice looking pizzeria and decided to head there for dinner only to find it closed. As we wandered down the main street we noticed that the german coffee shop did pizzas so stopped there. Luckily the wine was very good as the pizzas were so salty we gave up after a few slices.