New Year in Pucon - prayers, party and pampering

Exceptional
Pucon
Invigorating
Crampons

Dec 30th found us leaving Bariloche via the seven lakes, and heading towards Pucon, a beautiful rich district in Chile, which is dominated by the imposing 2,847m Volcan Villarrica. The majority of our group signed up to scale this active volcano on New Year's Eve. A bus took us up to the starting point of the hike. From there we decided to take advantage of the working chairlift, which would save us an hours scramble walking up loose volcanic scree that had zero grip. At the top of the chairlift we kitted up, putting on crampons, helmets, gators and grabbing ice axes. So began a 4 hr slog to the top of the volcano, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. Utmost concentration was needed as there were numerous patches of solid ice where it was near impossible to grip the crampons into the ground. Watching one lady, from another group, slip and then speedily slide about 50m down the sheer face of the volcano simply furthered everyone's resolve not to follow suit, and focus harder on foot placings.

Just before we reached the summit we were greeted with rancid sulphuric smells from the crater, as if the thinning air wasn't posing enough issues for some people. At the summit the views were exceptionally breathtaking, we were, what seemed, miles above the clouds. Sadly the volcano didn't put on much of a show for us, not a drop of lava was witnessed, just plumes of smoke. I tried to peer down into the crater but the sides were so steep, and the winds so strong, I did not dare to get a closer look.

The trip down the volcano was the ultimate highlight of the day. We removed our deadly crampons, put on nappy-like sheets and slid down the sheer side of the volcano on our bums, reaching speeds of about 35km in places. Silent prayers were said on seeing some of the drops. We were told to use our ice axe to slow ourselves down, however I rarely employed this tactic as a lot of pressure had to be applied to notice any deceleration and waving the ice axe about would only have made me a danger to myself had I yielded it. As it was I went ass over tea kettle at least twice, bounding out of the wee grooves in the ice and making my on path down the slope. I even managed on one occasion to flip around 180 and descend down backwards, don't even ask me how, no doubt something to do with force over speed or velocity!

Many expletives were uttered when I noticed a lady had come to a complete stop halfway down one slope. Cue frantic leaning on my ice axe in order to reduce my speed. While I didn't manage to come to a complete stop, I did manage, just, to reduce my speed (slightly) before careening into her. A domino effect was created though and by the end of it there were about 8 of us together in a heap on the slope. Thankfully we all saw the funny side and no injuries occurred with flaying ice axes.

For the most part I bombed away nicely down, but on one particular slope I began to slow due to an ice build up by my legs. We were provided with plastic trays which enabled us to go faster if our nappy contraption wasn't doing the job - a sore fact I discovered as Robin swooshed by me with a cheeky grin on his overtaking manoeuvre - cue more expletives on my part! In fact I think I sounded a bit like Mutley from 'Stop the Pigeon' at that point. We descended the volcano in a third of the time it had taken us to go up. Awesome is not the word. At the bottom the tour crew had cold beers waiting for us. Sha-weet!!

Pete laid out an epic meat-sweat-inducing feast that night. Pork, beef and lamb. We waved off 2012 at our campsite with Francois providing the entertainment with his party piece - popping a bottle of bubbly with a knife (sadly there was no sabre on hand). There was also a huge firework display set off from the beach not far from our camp. The sounds were immense, ricocheting all around the hilly streets, and no expense was spared on the fireworks, they were the most spectacular I've seen. Smiley face fireworks and fairy dust ones being my favourites.

After the exertion of the day before, New Year's was spent soaking, surprisingly, unweary bones in a hot springs at Termas Los Pozones. I gamely tried each of the six natural stone pools. There was a scalding hot pool that had most people yelping and dashing out after dipping a toe in. There I managed to float briefly trying my best not to move as doing so caused extremities to feel like they were being burned - a painfully pleasurable experience. I also had a dip in the ice cold river, which was bloody freezing but refreshingly invigorating. (I'll stop the eye-roll inducing comments now!).

All in all not a bad start to 2013!