We arrived in Puerto Varas on Sarah's birthday and had decided that more trekking in the national park was in order. We relaxed for the afternoon with chocolate and the view to the national park and Volcan Osorno rising up to 2600 meters.
The next day we had decided to trek but we awoke to see very low cloud and bad views....
The bus journey to the Vincente Perez Rosales park was long and bumpy, but we all managed to get some sleep. Nearing the park we started to realise that visibility was bad and we were not going to see the picture post cards we expected to see.
Once we started to walk we realised the air was filled with light particles, after an hour we were covered in a light layer of ash....Then we started seeing people wondering around in masks to protect them from the ash cloud. The reason for the volume of ash we were seeing was that Volcan Puyehue was once again playing up and had erupted spewing ash in to the atmosphere...we were about 60 km's away.
 |
| We were at the bottom red dot the Volcano is the top one! |
 |
| This is all ash not clouds |
The walk did end on a positive as we walked along a volcanic beach with the green blue clear waters lapping at our walking boots (not bare feet it was a little cold)
We sat at the bus stop waiting for the next bus when our friends mentioned that we could hitch hike back to Puerto Varas. Its a 60 km journey and there was 5 of us...a difficult task perhaps.
Within 20 minutes Sarah and Viviene had managed to stop a pick up truck and negotiated a lift for the 5 of us 10 km's out of the park, from there we would need another lift.
After about 10 k's we reached our point of separation, the girls had got on really well with the guys in the truck while the 3 guys sat in the trailer...We said our goodbyes and they headed off.
We stood on the side of the road wondering how we were going to find another lift for 5 people, we knew the bus we baulked to get was going to arrive in 10 minutes. Then with a hoot of the horn we turned to see the white pick up truck with a shout of "Forget the Volcano fancy a beer?"
With that we jumped in the back of the trailer and headed off for the rest of the 50km trip home.
We had a few beers in Puerto Varas and agreed to meet them all in Santiago for a BBQ in a few weeks.
We head to Puerto Montt in a few days to start our ferry trip (on the 4th Nov) through the fjords down to Southern Patagonia.
This is the map of our route on the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales:
This is going to be our boat/ferry for 4 days: Uh oh!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment