Pucón 

 Caving, Fishing, & Waterfalls

Friday November 2, 2007

I think Tom & Anna are missing our pets just a little - they took a fancy to a precocious kitten at Suizandina who enjoyed climbing into the hoods of their parkas and they made me promise to put these pictures up on the website for friends and relatives to see...

The kitten was truly fearless, it climbed up pant legs in order to leap into the bed of our truck among other acrobatic stunts. We wondered how many of its feline lives had already been squandered.

A cute kitten and good Swiss cooking (and relaxing thermal spas and gloriously picturesque volcanoes) couldn't keep us at Suizandina forever. And I don't think they would have let us stay - being that they were expecting a large incoming group of tourists the day we left. 

So as usually is the case in Chile, to get from one place to the other, we drove to the Panamerican highway, headed either north or south (south, in this case) and then after a short blast at high speed and on good pavement, we turned east or west (east, as I recall), drove a little more, and then arrived at our destination. Last Tuesday this destination was the resort village of Pucón, located on the southeast shore of Lago Villarica and within lava and ash belching distance of the massive volcano Volcan Villarica, the second most active volcano in South America (number two after Volcan Lliama which we just recently, almost, sort-of, close-enough-for-pretty-good-pictures, visited before leaving Suizandina).

Our lodgings for one full week will be the "Royal Chalet,"  (fancy Cabaña) on the grounds of Hotel Antumalal. This place is a study in 1950's style and elegance, which is pretty nice in most respects. The grounds and gardens are lush, and the rooms all contain fireplaces (even each bedroom in our chalet). The wiring, plumbing fixtures, and sliding metal-framed windows and glass doors are also mostly 1950's and could stand an upgrade here or there - and the fireplaces would work much better with firewood that had been chopped and split more than a week or two ago. Still it's quite comfortable and the chalet has a large living room where we can spread out homework and repack duffle bags - and we have a great view of the huge Lago Villarica.

Chilean tourists (well, at first they were Spaniards) have been coming here since the explorer Pedro Valdivia came upon the place in 1551. At first they came to pan for gold in the local rivers, but for the first 300 years, couldn't rise above the local Mapuche (natives) dominance. In the late 1800's they finally got the upper hand, began relegating the Mapuche to reservations, took control of the land, and started coming to visit Lago Villarica for recreation as well as mining. 

Now Pucón is a very touristy place, and sometimes is referred to as the adventure sports capital of Chile. Outfitters with offices on Avenida O' Higgins advertise rafting, fly-fishing, biking, horseback riding, volcano climbing (Villarica, of course), skiing (on Volcan Villarica), and other even more adventurous sounding activities. There is also a good assortment of shops and restaurants catering to the the presumed tastes and desires of generic touristas. We're here before the main summer holiday months of December, January, and February, but during the feriada of All Saints Day. This creates a Latin American Thanksgiving holiday of sorts, with many people getting not just Thursday and Friday but also the following Monday off of work.  

Our picturesque "Royal Chalet."  The Queen of England and Prince Phillip stayed here at Antumalal in the 1960's, and we wonder if they actually slept in this chalet.  The smoke in the picture is not coming from the fireplaces inside the chalet, but from some sort of wood-fire boiler that sends smoky exhaust through a pipe in the hallway and lukewarm water through baseboard radiators and under the hallway floor. It is a wonderful idea for central heating that, with the help of four electric space heaters, keeps the chalet quite comfortable - although the rooms smell quite smoky even without fires in the interior fireplaces, especially after the boiler has been stoked with a fresh load of wet wood. We gave up on the fireplaces after realizing how difficult it is to burn unseasoned wood (the kind that hisses and pops and bubbles water out the end of each piece), and how much smoke it makes. I have the feeling that the chalet's ingenious central heating design is just one of the untold quantity of building features we've encountered here in Chile that came closer to working as intended once upon a time, and might still function much better if used properly and/or maintained. But as is often the case, it is likely neither. 

Still nothing can spoil the beautiful lake views from our chalet, and the well-kept flower gardens on the grounds of Hotel Antumalal.  I think we can suffer through the smoke smell, but it was pretty bad one night. And somehow they did some magical chemical thing to get our yellow hot water to turn clear. We're not sure we want to know the details, but we'll stick to bottled water for the time being.

Wednesday dawned dreary so we opted for an "indoor" adventure excursion, visiting a natural lava tube cave on the flank of the volcano. Villarica is a very active volcano, and it seems to erupt about every dozen years or so. Scientific monitoring equipment has helped predict the last two eruptions, both of which caused no loss of life. The last eruption which happened before the deployment of such equipment occurred in 1981, when a lava flow ran to the north, through a campground on the south shore of the lake, and killed some of the campers. Now they use seismic monitors, located in a small side-cavity off the very cave we visited. This equipment gives them about a two month warning before a significant volcano eruption. There is a traffic signal located near the civic hall of Pucón that is the volcano status light. Green = All Clear. Yellow = Evacuate. Red = Eruption in Progress!   There are green arrows painted on the streets of the city indicating two different primary evacuation routes, one to a hill on the north side of town, and the other to a raised peninsula that sticks out into the lake to the south. 

The exterior of a large rope of flowing lava cools before the interior, which then sometimes flows out of the hardened shell to leave a natural tube cave. This is what we visited.

Lava is high in iron, which can rust as it cools leaving a reddish-brown chocolate frosting look.

When we entered the cave, we couldn't see the volcano behind the clouds and fog. When we came out an hour later - there it was. Each day scores of people trudge up to look into the smoky crater at the top of Volcan Villarica.

This is a snow-melt avalanche gorge that runs from the flank of the volcano down to the lake - a place you wouldn't want to be standing during any sort of eruption.

Wednesday was Halloween Day (or "Night of the Witches" in Chile). Although we saw plastic jack-o-lanterns in the store (and bought one), along with a few plastic masks and capes, the trick-or-treating thing hasn't really caught on here yet - although how can we be sure? Hotel security would probably chase off any little kids trying to approach our chalet.

Lynn's stomach was acting up Thursday morning, so she didn't join the rest of us who had signed up to go fly-fishing. I think this was Anna's idea. After more than a century of over-fishing, the rivers and lakes around Villarica are now restricted to fly-fishing catch-and-release only. I think we saw a handful of people later in the day clearly violating that rule.

This was the actual All-Saints Day holiday day, and most everyone, other than our fishing guide, had the day off. Many of them decided to go fishing (before or after visiting the cemetery, for sure). Since we were neither experienced nor in the possession of fly-fishing equipment, we let the outfitters have our business and take us down the river (so to speak). 

Good form Tom. Only one problem - you need some water!

Watch out fish.

First we floated down the Liucura River in a raft, trolling with wet flies.

And I caught a tiny trout!

Then Anna caught a big one...

and eventually, two more. Tom and I both had other fish on our lines that flipped off as I tried to haul them into the boat. This totally bummed Tom out because he couldn't get a fish picture to match Anna's, and the fish he almost caught, or caught almost, was probably the biggest fish of the day (fighting very hard and breaking water repeatedly).  But hey, as I told him, it's catch and release, anyway. We just released a little early.

Then it was time for some fly casting on the shore. I seemed to get the hang of it pretty well, off having a good time on my own while the guide Hugo helped Tom and Anna untangle their lines (repeatedly).  

All our guidebooks note that rich and famous people come to Pucón to be seen hanging out with other rich and famous people - often choosing the ritzy casino as a preferred venue for glamorous socializing. But alas, this will not be an option for us, even for Lynn and I who have legitimate I.D. indicating our right to gamble, smoke, and drink alcohol.  The casino was completely gutted by fire a mere month ago.  Our fishing guide drove us by the charred skeletal remains, where workers were lifting the burned shells of former slot machines out of the wreckage with a crane. "All empty," they sadly confirmed.  The fire was started in the traditional hotel/casino fire manner - a hot pan of grease igniting in the kitchen got out of hand and lit the greasy ceiling on fire which then sent everything up in smoke. Now I'll probably start worrying about when they last cleaned the chimneys in our wood-fire heated, 60 year-old chalet.

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Friday we hunted for waterfalls, and found plenty. 

Lynn's stomach had recovered enough to allow her to get out and about and function almost normally.

First stop:  Salto La China, a 73 meter cascade.

Second stop: Salto El Leon - which didn't earn as many photographs as La China because the 90+ meter falls made too much mist for our cameras.

Walking to and seeing Salto El Leon.

Third stop: an attempted hike to see the Salto de la Puma.

A carved Mapuche-head tree trunk and dilapidated bridge mark the entrance to a trail...

that soon disappears under a pile of broken trees. This past winter saw record levels of snowfall, and in dense thickets, littered with limbs and broken trunks, it looks like a bomb went off.

Lynn won't give up. She hears and then spots something through the thick trees, and then eagerly points towards the falls.

Carefully she pulls off the safety, takes aim, pulls the trigger,

and bags the quarry. Another waterfall photo to hang over the fireplace mantel, after the photodermist mounts and frames it. This was the closest approach and best view we could manage.

The valley view wasn't too bad,

but the road, in spots, was muy peligroso.

What will we do on the weekend? Stay tuned to Wietelworld for the latest news in the adventures of Anna, Tom, Lynn, and Rolf.  Hopefully you won't have to wait too long...

-Rolf