Pucón - an Outdoor Paradise!

We were there for 3 days and had an awesome time! Here´s a short review of our time there:
Day 1: Climbing Volcano Villarica.
First a couple of facts - 2840 m high, last eruption 1984, one of the 3 most active volcanos in Chile.
We headed out at 7:30am and got the full equipment: windproof jackets and pants, crampons, ice pick, and a funny device to put under your butt to slide down the hill. The climb up was about 4 hours and not too exhausting as we had already some experience climbing up mountains by now. The view from the top was gorgeous! Mountains, volcanos, lakes as far as you can see. The only thing that was a little difficult was to breathe with the sulphur coming out of the smoking volcano. The way downhill was much faster. We had this little thing to sit on and could just slide down little ´tubes´. That was much better than any waterslide in a waterpark. It was natural. It was just there. Some of them were slow and you could have a look left and right and some were really fast and you had to take care to stay on the slope. Great fun!

Day 2: Canyoning.
That was something we had never heard of before: You walk through a river and climb down waterfalls! (One of those things you tell your mum only after you did it and survived...) It was amazing! We walked about 4 hours in a river and had a private guide. This was really an experience that you have to live - you can´t describe it. We climbed down 4 waterfalls within the river and walked in a canyon the river created. We were all by ourselves and the only thing you could hear was the water and other noises nature created. The climbing was relatively easy and of course we were secured in 3 different ways, but it´s a wonderful feeling. Absolutely stunning and so much fun!!!

Day 3: Mountain biking.
Well, after the 2 days before, we decided to take it slow - just some biking to a beach and relax a bit. Well, that didn´t work out. The easy way to the next beach turned out to be 23km on a dirt road and there happened to be quite some hills - so much for taking it easy... The last 5km were straight uphill (who ever thought a lake would be somewhere uphill??), but it was worth it, we got our bath and headed back a different way which was luckily more downhill.

Those 3 days were really wonderful. Now we are in Santiago and the pace is quite different here, but more about that maybe next time.