We arrived into Pucon late, but not too late to book something for Sunday at the tour agency, Aguaventura. Everyone in our group booked some sort of trip, but five of us booked the main attraction - climbing Villarrica Volcano.

It was an early start the next day. The weather was perfectly clear and there were plenty of other climbers assembled at the 1400m volcano base. Its a five hour climb to the 2847m high summit, but at the start we took a optional chairlift, usually used for skiing season, to turn an hour of hiking into a two minute whizz. Getting off at 1800m it was straight on with the crampons and we were off. Without the metal spikes you wouldn't last a minute on the snow and ice.

With the sun beating down, the constant walking and the relatively low altitude, a t-shirt is all you need to stay warm even though you are surrounded by white. At the top it's a different story - you are much more exposed and the wind is howling around you. We layered up as quick as we could. The hike to the summit was quite easy and took a bit less than four hours.

It's worth mentioning at this point that the volcano is erupting, although very mildly and is considered "stable". But it also the most active volcano in South America, with 82 recorded eruptions. The ash trickles out of the crater, but at certain times of the year you can see the 1250 degree lava pool in the crater - unfortunately this was not one of those times. Although the wind took the ash away from us, at times you would breath in some and really feel it in your throat.

We spent about thirty minutes at the 200m wide crater, exploring the summit and taking in the spectacular views of the Andes. About 140km away we could see Puyehue Volcano erupting, its ash billowing out, snaking it's way around the mountains and filling the valleys. It's been erupting since June and caused massive evacuations and flight disruptions.

To borrow a line from Gravity, the bike company we used for Death Road in Bolivia, "going down has never been so fun." To get down Villarrica all we had to do was sit - gravity and the snow did the rest. Near the top, the ground was more icy so we just sat down and with three layer of trousers between ass cheek and ice, whizzed down the slopes. But after that the ground became softer so to get a bit of extra speed we sat on little plastic seats. With far less friction we were whipping down the side of the volcano. It was one of the most exilarating things we've done on the trip. What took four hours to go up took twenty to go down, with nothing but soaked trousers and big grins to show for it. We would have turned around and done it all again, if we didn't have to go up again.

Check out this video from Aguaventura for an idea of what our day was like: http://youtu.be/Ov3Zxms5i68