Valparaiso and Pucon - November 17-18th

Valparaiso
We got up early and left Santiago for a short bus ride to the nearby town of Valparaiso, the cultural capital of Chile. The town is built up on a hillside overlooking the ocean and all the bright coloured houses are pretty much built on top of each other. Its a neat looking city, amazing architecture and grafitti to look at. We arrived, found a good breakfast place where we brainstormed our own little tour for the day. We checked out all the plazas in town, and walked along the water down to the main pier where there was a cruise ships, fishing boats, tour boats and industrial section. The town has 12 elevators built into the hillside. They are really old and were built from 1890-1905. We took one right by the water up the hill for a nice view (despite the bad weather). The downside of tw day happened when we were walking up a hill to see the 'four churches' when out of nowhere a guy mugged me. He managed to sneak up behind me and grab my (very flimsy) new purse and yank it, snap the strap, and run! It was quite shocking, midday and plenty of people around, but thankfully I hadn't put anything of value in it since it was so flimsy. The sucker just got a few Kleenex and hand sanitizer type things. We were definitely a little shaken up after that but tried not to let it ruin the day. We caught the subway along the water to the nearby town of Vina del Mar. We went to the beach and passed a couple of hours napping in the sun before going back to Valparaiso for some dinner then onto our next bus.
-Court

Pucon
From Valparaiso we bused back to Santiago and from there an 11 hour trip to Pucon. We got to Pucon in the early morning and dropped our bags at the hostel (El Refugio) before setting out to find breakfast. Pucon is a small town that reminds me a lot of ski resort villages in BC. Everything is really green and lush with mountains surrounding the town. It's really pretty.he volcano Villarica is clearly visible above the rest of the mountains because its so much taller. Unfortunately it was not the nicest weather once again so a lot of the view was covered by clouds. The town is on the edge of a lake which we checked out in the afternoon. The beach is all really fine black gravel.

We woke up early this morning really excited for our volcano expedition! Luckily the weather behaved for us once again and the trip was a go! The start of the hike was a 45 minute drive and we both opted to pay 15 pesos to take the chairlift over the dirty lower part and save ourselves an hour and a half hike. At the top of the lift the snow started. We all had ice picks in our packs that we had to use on the climb because it is so steep and icy. I actually couldn't believe how steep it was! The hike took about four hours but it was totally worth it. It's an active volcano so at the top there is a massive smoking crater. It was really cool. The only (slight) letdown was that the valley bottom was covered in clouds, even though it was bright sunshine where we were, so we didn't as good of view as we could. It was still really impressive though. After a half hour at the top we got suited up for the downhill part. In our day ags we all got waterproof pants an jacket, a "snow skirt" (more like a massive diaper) and a crazy carpet sled thing. I was not sure at all about sliding down because it was so steep but it was SO fun. Going down only took 45 minutes because you go so fast! A few other groups were ahead of us so we had a trough to sled through. By the time the day was over and we were back in Pucon we were very tired! We had a few hours to kill before our next night bus. Argentina here we come!

-Court and Lisa

Pictures
1-Volcàn Villarrica
2-Volcàn Villarrica
3-Vina del Mar
4-Ancient elevator in Valparaiso
5-Valparaiso
6-Volcàn Villarrica
7-Valparaiso
8-crater at the top of Volcàn Villarrica
9-Volcàn Villarrica
10-black sand at Pucon
11-chairlift at the start of the hike
12-Valparaiso