We got to Pucon Tuesday finally after a long wait for the bus Monday evening. We had a bit of drama when we got there as the taxi dropped us off at the hostel we booked for it to be deserted and no one living there... very random, so we had to search around for somewhere to stay and in the end we did find somewhere in a pretty good location!!

It is a cute little town, not very old at all... Just took us a while to start using another currency again, especially the Chilean Peso as its almost 1000 to the ££. Our sole reason for going to Pucon was to climb the volcano Villarica that you can see from the bottom of the town.

We got lucky when we got there because there were a few people that had been waiting a few days o do the climb because the weather conditions were pretty bad but the day we decided to do it, it was a clear day!!

The climb started at 5 a.m. and it was freezing but they gave us most of the gear so it was bearable. There were so many stars and shooting stars as it was a clear night and we were so high up! We set off on the trek and it got pretty steep pretty quickly, it was a pretty difficult walk up to the first break point as some people including me (Nick) didnt have a head light so was kinda guessing where to step. Stil alive though. We got to the first break point almost like a deserted cable car stand for around 20mins then set off on another hour trek with the angle still as steep! We got a pretty awsome sunrise from the side of the mountain and could see out over the local towns and mountains. The 3rd trek was the funnest as we reached the snow cap and had to put on our gators, helmets and the spikes for ice walking! At this point it was ridiculously cold! We trekked up the steep icy slope to get to a viewpoint of the top of the volcano which was smoking quite a lot! After some debate the guides thought it was to dangerous to continue as the wind was seriously strong and the wind was blowing the smoke on our route up!! It was also a 45 degree angle and they said there was a good chance of at least one of us falling on the way down and because of this we had to stop there! It was an awsome view of the volcano top and the surrounding area! Coming down was'nt so difficult as going up but quite a bit of fun, and I (Natalie) fell over about 15 times on the way down, goes to show how good my balance is haha!! One Brazilian guy did'nt even make it to the 2nd checkpoint! After this we came back down and we sorted out our travels further up into Chile to Valporasio which is where we are now!!

Some really good photos on this one!!!!