After an overnight bus we pulled into Pucón early. Our hostel wasn't awake yet as no one was answering the door, so we went and found the only café in town that was open and had an overpriced breakfast.

Pucón is a little resort town, and it resembles a European resort town with its wooden cabins. It sits on the shores of the Lago Villarrica, but most impressive is the huge Volcán Villarrica looming ominously nearby.

After breakfast we were able to get an answer at the hostel and dump our bags, leaving us free to have a little walk through town. We reached the lake, and in the clear morning we could see a small stream of smoke coming from the top of the Volcano. A few boats were moored in the small bay surrounded by green pine forest.

A little further around the lake we found the Pucón Beach. The beautiful clear water met a shore of black gravel, not the nicest of beach surfaces. Since it was still early, and early isn't a thing in these parts of the world, there was only a few people around. The rows of kayaks and boats for hire indicated this would soon change.

Later in the day we walked up a hill behind town within the cemetery which promised a nice view. It turned out to be an average view but gave us something to do nonetheless.

The next day we decided that the infection/botfly/whatever in Fergs neck hadn't healed as it should have after 7 days of antibiotics, so we made an appointment at the medical centre for that afternoon.

We lazed on the beach for a few hours waiting for the appointment. It was surprisingly hot, especially laying on dark gravel, but the water was super cool and fresh to swim in. In the few hours we were there the beach went from fairly quiet to exceptionally busy, with hawkers walking up and down renting umbrellas and chairs, selling empanadas or ice cream, or balancing a mountain of beach balls and other floating apparatus on their heads.

When we returned to the medical centre we were fortunate enough this time to see a doctor willing to listen to us and properly examine Ferg's neck. He quickly agreed there was some kind of foreign object nestled under the skin, but explained he wasn't able to remove it, we would need to see another doctor for that. And with that, he arranged for us to see the other doctor and refunded the consult fee!

The other doctor had a quick look, then booked us in for the foreign object to be removed in the morning. And so we returned the next morning to the emergency department of the hospital as instructed and Ferg was admitted for surgery.

In the operating theatre (room with a bed), Ferg lay down while the Doctor, Nurse, Orderly and 2 Student Doctors prepared. They allowed Linds to squeeze into the small room to look on also, and even obliged a request to film the event!

After the area was slathered with disinfectant and covered with cloth, the Doctor injected what seemed like a rather large amount of local anaesthetic to the area before making a small but deep incision.

After digging around a little he pulled out a small object, and sure enough, it was the larvae of a botfly. While the Doctor wasn't particularly fussed, the student Doctors seemed quite surprised by it all. It was rather small compared to what we had expected, but we thought we may have killed it during our YouTube instructed attempts so remove it through suffocation and it had perhaps since shrunk.

So it was confirmed that Ferg had picked up a travellers worst nightmare, a live creature living and feeding inside him. But Barney as we had nicknamed him (or perhaps her?) was now gone, no longer hitching a ride as the third wheel of our trip.

The doctor asked us to return the following evening so he could check the wound. This meant a day more than we had planned in Pucón which wasn't a terrible thing. We spent another day at the beach and walked around, even had a few beers in the afternoon sun at a popular local bar.

That night (at 10pm) we returned to the hospital and Ferg was given the all clear, so we left in the morning for Puerto Varas.