Pickin up the Fam

After a nice overnight bus ride to Santiago, I got to pick up my family at the airport. We were both pretty exhausted from the previous night's travels, but I decided it was still a good idea to run the ragged around Santiago. We hit a lot of the big hotspots in Santiago like Cerro Santa Lucia, La Moneda Palace, and my favorite ice cream place, Emporio La Rosa. It was great to see them and be able to show them around my home for the past 5 months. That night, in order to not let them get too comfortable in their new surroundings, we took an overnight bus right back to Pucón (wasn't I just there not 24 hours earlier?). I wanted to make the most of their time here and knew we'd have time in Santiago later in the trip. The only difference about this bus trip was that we opted for the luxurious cama, or bed seats, with comfy seats that fold almost flat. It's nice to travel on something more than a shoe-string budget!

In Pucón, I had saved the best tour to do with my family, the all day ascent of Volcán Villarica. At over 9000 ft, and as one of Chile's most active volcanoes, it is truly a big undertaking. We were equipped with a full jacket and snowpants suit, climbing boots, an ice pick, helmet, and crampons (metal spikes for your boots) in order to help us climb the snow covered smoking volcano. It took a lot of effort, and got steadily colder as we got near the top but we made it. An unexpected consequence of this was that we were stuck breathing in toxic sulfuric gas, a sensation that made for just a quick stop at the summit. After the requisite pictures, we started the descent, a giant sled ride. We strapped canvas sheets to our butts and slide the whole length of the volcano, a distance that had taken us about 4 hours to climb. Needless to say, the ride down was a lot quicker and I was surprised at the speed that we picked up. In Pucón we also did the most extreme white water rafting I've ever seen, a class IV+ descent of the Rio Trancura. The river was so rough that at one point, we actually had to get out of the raft and walk past an especially rough section while our guide maneuvered it.

After Pucón, we headed farther south to the beautiful town of Puerto Varas, another German-influenced town set on Lago Llanquihue. We strolled the streets, grabbed some empanadas, found a dog that wouldn't leave us, and eventually visited a small little restaurant that famous food critic Anthony Bourdain had visited a year back. Awesome seafood place called Donde el Gordito, or "Where the Fatty."