Pucon and Valdivia

24.01.2007 - 28.01.2007 28 °C

Pucon:
Pucon is a lovely little touristy town and adventure mecca. Reminded me a lot of New Zealand. The scenery is similar, lots of mountains! And also had the same sort of feeling. You can do it all here - rafting, hydro speed, canyoning, canopying, kayak, hike, climb volcanos and relax after it all in the hot springs! We spent 6 days here in all. Most of our time revolved around climbing the volcano - finding a company to take us up, resting up for the volcano, actually climbing the volcano and resting after climbing the volcano. In between all this we did manage to see a few sights around the areas (lots of waterfalls!), visit some hot springs and do hydro speed down the rapids. This was really cool. I don´t really know how to describe it - it´s kind of like a kayak that´s been cut in half, or like a big, hollow plastic boogie board. You basically just hold onto it and ride it down the rapids - serious fun! At one point I was vertical on a wave. Zac was behind me, wishes it was him that caught the wave! Pretty cool stuff.

Valdivia:
Valdivia is a cute little university city. It´s very European with a strong German influence. Their pride and joy was South America´s largest brewery, Antstwerp, until it was destroyed (like most of the city) in an earthquake in 1960. They are still very much into their beer though and there was even a small beirfest on when we were there...we had to go along of course!
The university here is amazing. It´s pretty much is built in the botanical gardens, which are really beautiful. Nice for your breaks in between classes!
Another attraction of Valdivia is the fish markets and the sea lions. There is small colony of sea lions that live in the river that backs onto the fish markets and they pretty much just laze around taking handouts - nice life. Apparently a few years ago they were coming up to the side walks at night and scaring the shit out of tourists,so they had to build a fence to keep them at bay! They are pretty big, so I can imagine it would be a bit intimidating to come face to face to one of them in the middle of the night!
There are also a handful of spanish forts to go and see. We only stayed two nights here, which was ample time to see it all.