dred

While in Pucon I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about a close mate of mine. For the sake of anonymity, let’s call him Leigh D… or Mr Dennis. To clarify, I haven’t been thinking about Leigh Dennis so much as I’ve been thinking about his Tinder strike rate, which is comparable to my football kicking efficiency (i.e. very poor).

Pucon is located a 12 hour (overnight) bus ride from Valparaiso, around 780km south of Santiago. It marks the northern edge of the lakes district, which features numerous stunning blue lakes at the base of snow-capped volcanoes.

In summer, particularly January, Pucon can get booked out days in advance, as it’s a popular destination for both Chileans and Gringos. Apparently the Chileans come for the lakeside “beaches” while the Gringos come for the 2,860m high Volcan Villarrica – an almost symmetrical volcano that is one of the most active in South America, having last erupted in 2015.

Much like Queenstown in New Zealand, Pucon is a town that appears to be almost entirely based around outdoors tourism (although not quite as tailored towards extreme sports as Queenstown). Tour companies are located all over the main street, and the ratio of bars to permanent residents is very high. While both Erin and I have no interest in extreme sports, we find that we generally enjoy these towns, due to the beautiful scenery and great walks that tend to be on offer as well.

Unfortunately, for almost the duration of our stay in Pucon it was cloudy and we couldn’t see the Villarrica volcano. For a town that seems to exist purely because of this volcano, and lacking any character of its own, this wasn’t ideal.

Despite not being able to see the volcano, there were plenty of reminders about its presence. For instance, the street signs:

There were also maps displaying safe evacuation areas, and the daily testing of what we can only assume was the volcano alarm.

With not much doing in the town, two days in a row we caught the hour long bus to the Huerquehue National Park. The park is known for having stunning views of up to five volcanoes. We wouldn’t know because of the clouds. Luckily there were some other attractions in the park, including some pretty nice lakes and strange looking native plants. If nothing else, spending two days hiking through the national park was good practice for the multi-day trek we plan on doing shortly.

On our third morning in Pucon, we awoke to blue sky from our tiny loft room, and for around 10 minutes the sky was clear and the volcano was visible as we madly snapped pictures from the balcony of our hostel.

This brief sighting of the volcano is what got me thinking about Leigh Dennis. Our experience in Pucon felt like his experience on Tinder – predominantly unhappy with a brief moment of joy. And I wondered whether I’d enjoyed Pucon, and whether or not Leigh Dennis enjoys Tinder. For me, the 10 minutes the volcano was visible were amazing, and made it worth visiting Pucon, although I understand if people think otherwise. Maybe I should just ask Leigh Dennis what he thinks. Although for him it probably depends if the volcano erupts or not.

Andrew

Postscript: I wrote this post while on the bus back from our second day in the Huerquehue National Park. At that stage in the three full days we had been in Pucon, the volcano had been visible for about 10 minutes. When we got back to Pucon that afternoon, the weather had cleared up and that evening and prior to our departure the next morning we had fantastic views of the volcano. So if you read this Leigh Dennis, hopefully your Tinder experience and our Pucon experience continue to run hand in hand and your luck should change soon!