Volcano Climbing

The earth rumbled bellow the earths surface from the lava boiling deep down in the caldera. Sulfuric gasses burned my nostrils as I sat down on the snow for my lunch. I looked out over the stark contrast of endless green Andes mountains. At 2,847 meters, Volcano Villarica has a micro climate which keeps it in perpetual winter. It took about 5 hours to get to the top, but the view of the mountains, the lakes, the city of Horcòn, and the Chile-Argentina border, then later the slide down in the snow, made every step and stab with the ice axe worth while.

My school excursion started out with a plan to climb the volcano on Saturday, but unlucky weather almost made me lose my chance. We left on Thursday night and got to Pucon on Friday morning in time for our tourbus of several glorious watefalls, a giant lake, and to top it all off, a soak in the natural hotsprings untill the rain chased us back into the cabins.

Saturday morning I woke up to the rain beating on the tin roof and did not even get out of bed because I knew the volcano excursion would be canceled and my back up activity, mountain biking, would be miserable. So instead I relaxed in the cabin by the fire all day then did some shopping in the artisan fairs and had a couple drinks with friends when i got the guts to brave the rain. Pucon~s proximity to the volcano is kind of scary. Practice evacuation alarms went off several times during my stay and yellow lines pointing to the emergency evacuation route were all over the city, but Volcano Villarica has not erupted since 1988 although it still has activity.

Sunday there was no rain, but the volcano trek was once again canceled because of the resulting ice. My hopes were crushed, but I ended up having a great day anyway on a 6 hour hike in the Huerquehue National Park. There were a couple of great waterfalls, but even better were the high altitude lakes up above where I did a little swimming. The viewpoints were amazing because at last, the volcano emerged from the clouds and we got a great view. Thats when I decided to take my chances with the weather and stay an extra day for the volcano climb.

When I got back into town I immediately looked for hostals because I thought I would be staying alone, but then I ran into someone frommy group and found out that 7 other students (of 50) were also staying, so we rented out a cabin and had the whole groups left over food as our feast.

Monday was the best weather of the whole trip and I am certain that climbing a volcano was a much more valuable use of my time than the classes I skipped on Monday. Overall, despite the setbacks, I had an amazing and unforgetable experience and I look forward to my next weekend away from the city, but untill then, I have a LOT of school work to do.