Miraculously we managed to leave Concepcion and find the right road to Los Angeles. The road ran up the Rio Bio Bio but sadly we didn't stop to take photos. We also went passed a town called Santa Juana (St Joan) which had a massive wooden cow at its gateway. The road through the coastal cordillera was lined with trees and full of logging trucks, labouring up the hills and whizzing down them improbably fast.

At Los Angeles, we found a bank and bought provisions. The skies are clear blue and to the east there were snow topped volcanoes. The one we were going to, Volcan Antuco, stood out as black and symmetrical, with its flat topped cone. As we head east, it seemed to be always at the end of the road. The route took us through mile upon mile of planted forests, before eventually turning into volcanic scrubland.

We were held up (in a good way) by cowboys herding their cattle along the road.

Having reached the gates of Nacional Parque Laguna de Laja, the warden said it was shut. Indeed by the entry gates it said you could only go up into the park in the morning and come down in the afternoon, but it said these were winter times. We turned back and found some cabanas a couple of miles away called Antucalhue, which had English spoken on one of its signs. It was a small complex with maybe 4 or five hexagonal huts, apart from the main office/bar and the owners’ house. We were shown Cabin 4, which had a kitchen- living room, two bedrooms, its own BBQ area and best of all, a wood burner heated hut tub! The owner was welcoming, told us to "Sit down" and then explained that it was his brother who spoke English, not him, and apologised, even though we had done the whole rest of the negotiation in Spanish.

Having moved in we had a wander around. The complex is set beside a river and we watched a small black and white bird fishing in the waters. There was a huge BBQ pit, surrounded by pumice boulders, a wood fired sauna, outside party area and small, unheated pool. Down near the stream we found what looked like a small fish farm. All this under Antuco’s volcanic cone, with a glacier hanging above us. Pure magic!

We ate dinner outside just before the sunset. Joan never sleeps well in a place on the first night so woke up and decided to write the blog ready to upload when we got back to civilisation, only to find that there was WiFi and night time electricity……