I escaped the authorities once again and I'm now back in Chile, Pucon to be exact. After Eric left I realized that this is more or less the first solo traveling I've done in my life if you don't count work and single travel days. I stayed in Bariloche an extra day to try and figure out my next move. This guy from North Carolina wanted to rent a car and drive the 7 lakes - I agreed to join on the condition that he also wanted to hike the volcano. We didn't have immediate luck in funding other passengers to defray costs, but when I sent a facebook feeler to our Chalten hiking buddy he already had a car rented for the next day with two open spots. Count it.
This started the most culturally exhausting two days of my trip. We made friends and cooked dinner with another American, an Aussie and Kiwi. Then I had to meet up with the car group - my German friend living in Spain and two Spaniards (only one joining the car ride) whose English was worse than my Spanish. So i had my first night out speaking almost entirely Spanish. The next day we drove up the 7 lakes trail, but it was cloudy and I didn't take many pictures - pretty, but similar to northern MN with mountains instead of rocky cliffs. We found a cool youth hostel and our Spaniard ran into a Catalonian doing a round-the-world she had met in Ushuaia. Devon and myself booked out bus to Pucon and then we had another night out of dinner and Spanish. Exhausted we went to sleep and got up for our 6am bus across the border. Beautiful sunrise views of Volcano Lanin, although it clouded up by the time the bus stopped for customs and immigration. We got our hostel and booked our guide for the Villarica volcano hike tomorrow - then check my mail to find a friend knows people here. So I'm waiting to hear back from them, but I'll probably go check out the guy's pub tonight an maybe get enough insider info to stick around here a little longer.
If the weather is nice I'll make sure to post tomorrow about the volcano hike. If the weather is looking bad we postpone...
This started the most culturally exhausting two days of my trip. We made friends and cooked dinner with another American, an Aussie and Kiwi. Then I had to meet up with the car group - my German friend living in Spain and two Spaniards (only one joining the car ride) whose English was worse than my Spanish. So i had my first night out speaking almost entirely Spanish. The next day we drove up the 7 lakes trail, but it was cloudy and I didn't take many pictures - pretty, but similar to northern MN with mountains instead of rocky cliffs. We found a cool youth hostel and our Spaniard ran into a Catalonian doing a round-the-world she had met in Ushuaia. Devon and myself booked out bus to Pucon and then we had another night out of dinner and Spanish. Exhausted we went to sleep and got up for our 6am bus across the border. Beautiful sunrise views of Volcano Lanin, although it clouded up by the time the bus stopped for customs and immigration. We got our hostel and booked our guide for the Villarica volcano hike tomorrow - then check my mail to find a friend knows people here. So I'm waiting to hear back from them, but I'll probably go check out the guy's pub tonight an maybe get enough insider info to stick around here a little longer.
If the weather is nice I'll make sure to post tomorrow about the volcano hike. If the weather is looking bad we postpone...
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