The Lake District - Pucon

Travelling with the Gap tour group I actually arrived a week early in Santiago as my flight to New Zealand wasn't until Monday 14th. So I decided to visit the Lake District about 1000km south of Santiago.

My first stop was Pucon, a small town that was right on a lake and very pretty. A soon as I arrived with the night bus I checked into a hostel and met instantly some new people. That made me feel like a real backpacker again and actually over the next week I really appreciated how fantastic it is travelling by myself!

I met two guys on the bus, one was from Israel and one from Australia, and they were keen to join me on a cycle trip to another lake and some waterfalls. They were a bit faster than me and though that they couldn't see it all with that relaxed speed I was cycling. I really don't like people having to wait for me, so told them to go ahead. Funnily I managed to see all the places I wanted to visit with my bike and strangely never met them again on the track or back in town. I was even back before them two, but I guess on my return journey from the lake I cheated a bit as the bus driver was rather keen to take me back with my bike! The whole ride was still 25km and it wasn't very warm either. So I was very happy.

Back at the hostel, I cooked myself some lovely tomato soup. I missed cooking, as most hotels we stayed in during the Gap tour didn't have a kitchen!

At the hostel, which was run by a German and French Canadian student, I met also another guy from New Zealand and a girl from Hong Kong. They decided to join me on a trip to the Huerquehue National Park. I wanted to hike the lakes as I climbing Villarica Volcano wasn't available due to the bad weather. I didn't expect lakes to be that high up, but we had to walk upwards for about 2 hours until we finally got to the first one. It was worth it though and we saw another two as well.

Really pretty this area and very much reminded me on Germany as there were loads of mountains, lakes and wooden houses. You could compare it with the Algaeu! Maybe the German immigrants from 150 years ago had some significant impact too, you certainly could stop everywhere having Kuchen of the same quality and choice as in Germany!

On my last night I went out with the French Canadian girl in the hostel to the 'blue house', which was a blue bungalow where a couple of her friends lived, and it's apparently The Party house! Most people there were only 18, made me feel old, but they were really nice. I learned another card game and we drunk a lot of Piscola, which is Pisco (the schnapps) with Coca Cola. Now I cannot remember the name of the card game, something Arriba, but it was certainly funny!