Sue And Graham's Excellent Adventure: Pucon- Bikes and Hikes in the Great Chilean Outdoors.

Located in the lush Lakes District of Southern Chile, Pucon is a little town known for its adventure sports including climbing the still active Villarica Volcano, river rafting, horseback riding, mountain biking and hiking in nearby wilderness areas. During the two days we were there the winds were too strong to climb the volcano, but we weren’t too disappointed as it saved us some $$. Instead we rented bikes and took a 15 ride up to a sparkling lake. The area actually reminded us a lot of parts of Washington State, with forested rolling hills, rivers and lakes. As we cycled down dirt country roads we could have easily been fooled into thinking we were on some back road in Skagit County

We spent Graham’s birthday evening enjoying a wine tasting (more like bottle drinking) event put on by our hostel. We sampled several varieties of Chilean wines with other travelers from around the globe.

We spent our second day on steep 10 mile hike through El Cani Reserve, a land trust with forests of the araucaria araucana tree- (the popular name is Monkey puzzle tree). We climbed to the top of the Mirador (lookout) for some stunning views of the Volcano and surrounding lakes before having to run (literally) back down the trail to catch the last bus of the day back into town. We made it with about 10 minutes to spare. Sue's calf was started to hurt on the way down. We took a couple of days rest after the hike so hopefully it will be ready for the next hike.

With that we bid farewell to Chile and hopped on an all-day bus across the Andes mountain range into southern Argentina.