Chile Roadtrip: Part One Pucon and Volcan Villarica by Henry

Our vacation started by going across the Andes and through a pass called Mamuil Malal. This pass takes you very close to Volcan Lanin, which is one of the biggest volcanos in this part of Patagonia.

When you cross into another country you have to go through the Aduana (Customs/Immigration). This part of the trip was very boring because we had to wait in line and then some guy looked at all our papers and said we could go. You have to do this twice, once in Argentina and once in Chile. The Chile people are much more fussy and asked lots of questions. By the time we were done with this we were very hungry. We went to a roadhouse restuarant and all had the same thing..chicken and pasta. It was pretty good.

We went to Pucon. Pucon is a very busy place. There are lots of people and cars. You wont believe how many tourists there were on the beach. The sand on the beach was jet black because the earth in the area is lava. Pucon was beautiful because you have a big lake, nice beaches and a cool volcano called Villarica. We spent the night at a hotel on the lake. We walked around on the beach and had ice cream. We went for a swim in the pool and had dinner there. We went to bed after watching some TV. We dont have TV in Patagonia so this was a treat.

Villarica is an active volcano. You can see the smoke. The next day we went to the volcano. We were able to go inside the volcano, into a lava tube. A lava tube is where hot lava makes holes in the ground. This cave was 650m long and they think 2000 years old. It was dark and we had to wear helmuts so we didnt hit our heads.

After the caves, we did the Canopy. It was a zip line through the forest at the bottom of the Volcano. It took us about 45 minutes to do 12 platforms and 9 zip lines. After the Canopy we started to make the drive to Valdivia on the coast.