We took a rather long bus from Puerto Varas to Pucon. On arriving we got off the bus and took a minute to get our bearings prior to heading to our next hostel destination. Whilst sitting there at the bus station some woman came up to me and greeted me with a firm Shalom, it would seem that my new found facial hair gives me a somewhat Israeli appearance. I returned the greeting in Spanish and ensured her that I was not Israeli.

We headed from here to La Maison which was a hostel owned by an Argentinian guy called Andres whose family were French and who had himself spent some time in Paris. The hostel actually turned out to be his family´s old summer holiday home, which gave it a really nice homely feel. After settling in we turned our attention to what we were going to do whilst in Pucon. The most obvious thing there is the huge Villarica volcano which towers over Pucon. We had to weigh up whether we wanted to scale the mountain or not, given recent occurences where two tourists had died on their descent we figured that we would maybe sit this one out, ahead of us there would be plenty more life threatening activities that we could partake in.

We instead decided to spend one day walking round the local environs taking in the various waterfalls. After much walking we arrived at one of the saltos only to be greeted by some woman who tried to charge us to enter into a what seemed public waterfall. Rather surprised and annoyed at the gaul of the woman we replied no and walked off. Somewhat disheartened we walked about 50m down the country road only to find what looked like the old entrance the water falls. So we went in this way and crept rather quietly down to the waters edge to see the falls. We went undetected and having not had to pay. Our criminal career continues.

The next day we decided to visit the local hot springs at night. After a journey of break neck speed almost colliding with a strolling cow in the road we arrived at the springs. We spent 2hrs hopping in and out of the varying temperature pools - which varied from warm to boiling hot.

On the last day we decided to get a massage done at the health centre next door to our hostel. Recouped and revitalised we headed on to our next destination in Chilean wine territory of Santa Cruz.