Pucon, Chile - Day 25-29

We ended our stay in Chile after 4 more days spent in the beautiful Lakes District town of Pucon. So far, this has been the nicest town we have visited. It's very clean, the landscape is amazing with mountains, beaches, rain forests, and lakes surrounding the town, and so green.

View from town of the smoking Villarrica Volcano we climbed.

Broken shocks, broken brakes, and extremely heavy bikes made this the most difficult dirt road we've ever ridden!

Hanging out at the beach felt so good after a month of cold! Trying to work on our tans for Brazil.

First time fishing, finally!

Hiking in Parque Nacional Huerquehue.

Monkey-Puzzle trees grow up to 150 ft tall and can live as long as 2,000 years!

 

Volcan Villarrica, Pucon, Chile - Day 24

Our first day in Pucon was spent hiking the Villarrica Volcano. It stands 9,340 ft tall and continuously emits smoke, and sometimes lava. This volcano is one of the most climbed mountains in all of South America. Many people are forced to turn around due to bad weather and toxic fumes, and some have even died attempting to summit, but our lucky-streak continued with great weather! Once again, due to lack of equipment, we had to take another guided tour. Most people chose to take a chairlift up the beginning section, and since we're not lazy, we were one of the very few who walked. Walking this section put us behind all the other groups, but we met up with 2 German girls and a cool guide who marched us all the way to the top, passing at least 100 people, and summiting a half hour before the next group.

Reaching the summit. The fumes were so toxic, they made our nose and throat burn.

Because we summited 1st, we were able to hike down into the crater, which most guides don't allow. The gases were too thick so we were unable to see the magma lake, which sometimes spews out lava!

Suited up in our rental gear for the ride down.

It took 3.5 hours to summit and only 45 minutes to slide on our ass all the way down :)

 

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 13

This was our final day in the park, which began at 4:30 AM to hike up to the towers during sunrise. The towers are the main attraction of the park, and weather permitting, they turn an amazing red when the sun rises. We usually are the last ones to show up for most things we do in life, but not this morning! We were the second people up there and had a great viewing spot!

Although a cloud blocked the sun from turning them red, we couldn't believe how we lucked out again with little wind and blue skies!

Guanaco on our hike out

Some well-deserved rest waiting for the bus

After our last 9-mile stretch we are really looking forward to our first shower in 6 days! What an amazing trek! The weather was unbelievable and we still got to experience the winds of Patagonia, whether we liked it or not. Total distance covered from the "W" plus extended hikes was 65 miles in 5 nights and 6 days. (FYI - that's more mileage than the entire circuit)

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 12

Today was the longest and hardest hike of the whole trek; over 12 miles. After 5 1/2 hours of nonstop hiking with the packs, our feet are not happy with us! BUT, once again, the weather was great!

Kris keeping things charged with the solar panel

No wind

End of the hike. Happy feet.

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 11

Today was just a 9 mile day hike from camp up the Valle de Frances. It feels so good to not have our big packs on today! We lucked out with another day of no wind and no rain.

We saw too many avalanches to even count today

Panoramic view from the top

Back at camp

The downside to having no wind means SO many flies

These beautiful ground orchids grow throughout the park

 

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 10

Today, we hiked 11.1 miles to the third campsite, which was FREE! Our feet hurt. We lucked out with another beautiful day with almost no wind.

So far, we've only seen a few trees with leaves. The fires have done a lot of damage.

View from near our campsite. We have already seen 2 avalanches and heard about 10!

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 9

Our 2nd day in the park consisted of trekking 11.5 miles to stay at another paid campsite near Glacier Grey. We had much better weather this day! Sunny with a nice breeze.

Beautiful campsite

After setting up camp, we went for another hike to see the glacier and icebergs.

This is the 3rd largest ice field in the world (Antarctica is 1st and Geenland 2nd)

 

Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile - Day 8

We arrived at the park with our bags packed with 10 days worth of food to be told by the park rangers that they had just closed the big Circuit Loop due to waste-deep snow! What a bummer! So, we settled for the typical 5-day trek called the "W" with a few add-on trail sections to make it longer.

We were prepped countless times about the wind in Patagonia, but none of it could have come close to preparing us for how the insanely strong and relentless wind is here. It's not like anything else we have ever experienced and it made taking photos really difficult.

Bella fighting the 50 mph winds

This is not the beach! The waves on this lake are strictly from the wind.

After 10.5 miles of battling the wind, we came to our first campsite. We quickly realized that this is not typical backpacking trip in the wilderness. For one, they have buildings that are more or less ski lodges that serve food, have full bars, grocery stores and showers for those who can't handle the full outdoor experience. On that note, their "outdoor experience" still comes with running water, cooktop stoves, and outlets to charge your iPhone. Did we mention that they charge $18 to camp here...you're not allowed to camp anywhere else.

This campsite is filled with people who take the catamaran across the lake and don't even hike here - LAME

They force you to cook in these huts since people have burned down large portions of the park

 

Puerto Natales, Chile - Day 7

After spending all of yesterday on a 12-hour bus ride from Ushuaia, which included a portion where the bus drove onto a ferry to take us across the Magellan Strait, we arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile. We spent our day in Puerto Natales restocking and planning for the Patagonia trek in Torres Del Paine National Park. We are planning to trek the 10-day long Circuit Loop in the park. We had know idea how stressful it would be to plan for 10 days of camping food!

View of the harbor in Puerto Natales

Kris carrying our 25 lb box of food for our 10-day trek tomorrow

You can see from the two pictures, the drastic change in weather that this area receives within a few hours. What you can't tell from the picture, is that Kris had his coat on because it had been snowing earlier, which apparently was very strange weather for this time of year. This made us very nervous, because we didn't bring any snow gear!