Pucon a very quaint little town in the shadow of 2 volcanos, not a very sensible place to build a town really. But beautiful none the less, 2847m volcano Villarrica brings in the tourists. Its huffing cone emits smoke daily and actually last erupted in 1984, scary stuff... The major tourist attraction here is scaling the side of the volcano at this time of the year with ice picks and crampons, so of course this is what we set out to do.

Suited up, kit bags and packed lunches on our backs we head off at 7am. Sharons boots were rubbish so she sits at the chalet at the bottom to wait for my return. Well, the red wine and steak in Argentina has clearly taken its toll, it was ridiculously hard going. The chileans clearly have a funny idea of 20 percent inclines, it was almost 80 at points, every step was hard work. I got to 1850m in just under 3 hours and was exhausted, several of my group dropped out which only really left the serious climbers and feeling like I wouldnt be able to keep up with them, I decided I had achieved enough for one day and sit and enjoy the view for a while. At the foot of the volcano was lake Villarrica and all around were mountains and of course opposite the other volcano. I could clearly seé the smoke from the volcano I was sat on, so took a few photos and started my descent.

This is where the real fun began, we got nappy like waterproof mats to attach to ourselves and then we could slide down the volcano using our ice picks as breaks. We absolutely flew and it was hilarious fun, much better than the parts that were only walkable. We got down in under an hour I think, for which Sharon was very grateful as she was a little bored just sat waiting.

We stayed in Casa Mario, effectively a room in someones house. Our room was freezing and made of nothing more than thick cardboard I think, luckily our lounge came complete with big fire and our beds had 4 rugs on each, so it was only really getting out of bed in the morning that was difficult. The owner was very sweet and got out a DVD player for us and loads of films, kept our fire burning and even drove us to the supermarket to get supplies.

Today, we have a much needed massage planned before heading on our night bus to Santiago for the weekend, only 11 hours, hapy days..