So after Santiago we travelled down to Pucon, in the lake district of Chile.

From the town you can see Villarica volcano!! Which is one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world!!

Its a really pretty place, with a beach on the lake, and a little harbour for fancy boats, we found a lovely hostel and the weather was perfect!!

We decided to hire bikes one day, and cycle to another lake. This sounded like a good idea. Ha! Was hard bloody work on the way there, and i had a few stages where Jon calmly encouraged me to get a grip and keep going! We had mountain bikes, and they were great on the dirt track, however not so great on the tarmac, up the 5k hill! Anyway we reached the lake, 24k later (lots up hill, and a fair bit of moaning) and sat to have a little picnic and dip our toes in the water! Then another 24k back! I actually enjoyed it on the way back, probably as it was mostly downhill!

We had a chill out day the next and booked our volcano trek for the next day!

So off we went to Villarica, with a group of other toursits all ready to climb up to the top of the active volcano! We reached the bottom and was given the option of a chair lift to skip the first hour of trekking on dusty gravel, i took that option, it was encouraged as that part of the walk is really dull apparently. Didn't need convincing.

Anyway, after riding up the first bit on the dodgy looking chair lift we began trekking! Backpacks on and pick axe in hand! It was brilliant walking on the snow, and it got pretty steep quite quickly! After about 3 and half hours we reached the top!! The view the whole way up was incredible. The photos don't do it justice! We sat at the top of the volcano, had a bite to eat and took in the scenery! We looked over into the crater, and watched the smoke escape! The smoke was quite strong, and unpleasant to breathe in, it made me cough for ages.

After about 40 minutes it was time to go back down! We got our waterproof clothing on, and our sledges ready! We slid down the volcano, on our bums!! Ha! Was so funny! Previous people slidding down had created little flumes in the snow, and on some of them we flew down! Ended up completely drenched, but was worth it!

Left Pucon, and headed down and across to Bariloche, Argentina!!