Fun del Agua

Don´t get your hopes up ! Contrary to the previous picture, Señor Hans is smiling heaps in his new destination, the small resort town of Pucon in the Chilean lake district. It is an amazing area, and the Chileans thinks so too - it´s packed here (for Chilean standards). And some of them are even smiling.

It feels a bit like a cross of the Ardennes, Sweden and Alaska: the lakes, rivers, houses, the rolling hills, the rustic atmosphere ... and then there is this huge perfectly coned, snow-covered volcano looming in the background all teh time (I´m climbing it tomorrow).

I already had the perfect day here. I met agents Maartje and Sander again and we went mountainbiking to the "Ojos de Caburgua", a series of waterfalls and pools of crystal clear icy cold water ... where we went swimming ! And jumping into the waterfalls, diving from the rocks and generally behaving like 10 year olds again :-D

A bit further on was the Lago de Caburgua, which supposedly has a white sand beach. We couldn´t see any white sand, just the black volcanic sands that is the norm here and then some brown-coloured beach like we have in Holland. Of course that ended up being the "white peculiarity of nature" ... funny people, the Chileans. It didn´t deter us from having a crispy cool, much-needed, dive into the lake.

If that wasn´t enough water fun, we rounded off the day with an evening visit to the hot springs. Gazing at the stars from the soothing hot volcanic waters ... and then there was the wild water rafting trip (class 4 and 5) yesterday.

And today ... is relax day, or perhaps playing around a bit with the puppies at the hostel ... Oh yes, Señor Hans is smiling :-)