Pucon: Adventura en la District de los Lagos

After our warm-up trip to Cascada de las Animas, 13 of us kicked it into high gear and traveled down to Pucon, a small town in the southern part of Chile that is known as the adventure capital of South America. Pucon, as described in Lonely Planet’s Chile guide book, “can be boiled down to three things: the lake, the volcano and its easy access to every kind of outdoor sport imaginable. Pucon is a place where a variety of earthly wonders conspire to create a point of inspirational natural energy.” Obviously we had to visit.
Three guys rented an SUV and the remaing 10 of us rented squeezed into a maxi-van we rented from the local Alamo branch. The drive down took about 10 hours, but that included a leisurely lunch at an awesome steak restaurant with its own vineyard (the drive back took about 8 hours). The main highway that runs the length of the country here is called Route 5, and just like in the United States, but scenery down looked very similar to California -- green, lush, lots of vineyards. We even passed through San Fernando and Los Angeles on the way (as well as guys selling fish hanging from sticks)!

Our cabin was awesome -- slept 11 people and we made it sleep 13: Pine Lakes Resort just between Villarrica and Pucon right on the lake.  The owner, Armando, is a fantastic guy and so helpful.  We found out a few days into our trip that his groundskeeper had a health emergency and he canceled all the reservations except for ours.  He was so impressed with the ND MBA students last year that he didn’t want to turn us away.  So we settled into our cabin, grilled out, drank pisco and played a serious game of cards.
The next morning we woke up to a nice sprinkle of rain: something great for cozy cabins with wood-burning stoves but not ideal for outdoor adventures…or is it? Six of us embraced the weather and went white water rafting (bigger, faster river than the previous weekend!) and ziplining through the forest canopy (we didn't touch the ground for an hour!). The other group went to the Geometric Thermals (which the first group visited the next day). That night, one group went to visit some rustic hotsprings, while the rest went into town and had a super good dinner at a restaurant that Armando recommended. We were there in the off-season, so the whole place was pretty deserted, but Chileans are so hospitable that they were happy to serve us wherever we went! After rating, the guides had pisco sours ready and waiting for us, and after canopying we were treated to piping hot hot chocolate...good stuff.

On our second full day in Pucon, the weather was not clear enough to go on the guided tour up the volcano but it actually ended up working out ok (even though we were still a little jealous of the awesome pics from last year where they summited the mountain).  We hiked from the base camp up through to some pretty deep snow…all in all about 2 or 3 hours. Four of the guys even braved cold and slid down a HUGE bowl on their butts! (Video to come) The clouds lifted just enough to give us spectacular views of the lake and valley...definitely worth the climb.

Our next stop was the Termas Geometricas (Geometric Thermals)...a 1.5 hour drive on shoddy dirt roads in the mountains, but 100% worth the trip. There are numerous hot springs in the Pucon area but this one takes the cake. For a while we thought we were going to be stranded among the sheep farms in rural Chile, but our Hyundai maxi-van pulled through. 

Not too long ago these hot springs were built into a spa with over 15 different pools complete with waterfalls and misty fog. Each pool is kept at different temperatures with steaming hot water flowing past the freezing waterfalls.  Our screaming under the waterfall might have momentarily ruined the serenity of the termas!

After we were all well-baked in the hot springs, we journeyed back to the cabin and had a late-night BBQ dinner. We were lucky enough to be driving by Lake Villaricca right at sunset, so I'll leave you with one final beautiful picture of the view we saw.

Ciao!