¡Hola Amigos!Last weekend ISA took the last excursion as an entire program, and it was by far the best one yet. We left Thursday night on a tour bus rented exclusively by ISA. I can't quite express how much more interesting a long bus ride is when everyone on the bus is a good friend of everyone else on the bus. Activities ranged from football to soccer to singing Simon and Garfunkel, Jack Johnson, Counting Crows, CCR, Dave Matthews, Van Morrison, etc. accompanied by an instrument called the chorango (it is comparable to a ukelele although it's origin is South American, not Hawaiian). It was a riot.
Friday was occupied by a tour of the sights around Pucón, whose location in the Lake District of Chile made most of the sights water-related; we saw three waterfalls, a lake, and a hot springs. I think this time I'll let the photos do the talking.
Here's the bus we spent the weekend in. We took a day-long tour in it, we rode it up a horrendous dirt road to the volcano, and we took it ziplining on Sunday. Basically we spent a lot of time getting really cozy with each other. This is the same design as the bus we took to the first soccer game in Santiago (I believe I had a rather colorful description of the seating arrangement in that blog, and here's the living proof). This puppy seats 25.
This waterfall is called "Salto el China" and plunges urgently downwards a whopping 73 meters before turning into a tranquil mountain stream again. I needed a wide-angle lens to fit the whole thing in the shot--as it is the spray of the water hitting the pool at the bottom isn't even visible. From my best estimate, and by best estimate I mean the closest I can come to a real estimate without multiplying anything by -9.8m/s^2, it took the water 4 seconds to fall from the top. In other words this shot falls woefully short of giving the proper perspective of the size of this thing. (Try counting one-onethousand two-onethousand three-onethousand four-onethousand in your head and it'll give a better idea.)
The coolest part of the trip was climbing the volcano, Villarica. It is the most active volcano in South America and shoots up to a height of 2,983 meters. Here's the crew in the tourist agency, suiting up. We got the whole setup--ice axe, gators, pants, jacket, helmet, crampons, boots and a diaper-looking thing for glissading (that's the fancy word for sliding down a mountain/glacier/snow covered slope on your fanny). From left to right is Jessica, David, Will, Alex, Ole (center), Hal, Danny, Aubrey, Kelly, Adam and Anne.
Hal, Luke, and I. When you're carrying an ice axe up a volcano, you don't smile for photos.
Villarica. I thought the cloud formation over the top was really cool, and I'm hoping someone with more meteorological knowledge than myself can tell me what the name of it is.
The crew climbing up Villarrica. In the background of the photo, a large lake is visible. The town of Pucón sits on the right hand shore of the lake. In case you're noticing a trend, it is difficult to capture a normal photo of Adam; see above photo of the rental shop.
Victory! Me, at the top. It's hard to see, but this shot is of the crater of the volcano. The top was so windy and cold that we only stayed for about 5 minutes--it was practically unbearable. It was one of those situations where the wind could practically support your body weight. What's more, the odor coming from the crater was absolutely horrendous. To take this photo I had to hold my breath. If you want to get an idea of the foulness of the smell, take the strongest salt and vinegar chip you can find, place it on your tongue and inhale. When done properly this will make you cough. Multiply it by twenty and you have "arôme de volcan". I managed to get close enough to the crater to get a shot of the lava, but it didn't turn out very well very because of all the smoke. This was the last photo I took before my camera died, so fishing and ziplining in the rain on Sunday are photographically undocumented. All in all the trip was a blast and it was fun to get the group together one last time before we leave. Hope all is well at home.
ya me voy, Andrius
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