Dec. 16th - Struggling to reach Pucon

Dave´s first thought of the day:

"Oh no! What have I done? I was only trying to show my wife a good time on her birthday, and instead I've made a terrible mistake! Please tell me that we don´t have to get up and drive to the airport, fly two hours, and then drive two hours!" Funny how he hadn´t thought about that at all the night before when he had glass of wine, a margarita, a pisco sour, a mojito, a beer...

Or something like that. After struggling mightily to get dressed and packed, off we go to the Santiago airport to fly to Tecuma. Unfortunately, in our attempt to get back on the highway we get stuck for 30 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic to eventually discover that the on ramp we are looking for doesn't exist. After some tense moments (exacerbated by all of celebrating from the night before), we make in on the highway only to miss our exit for the loop leading to the aeropuerta. We backtrack, make the right turn and haul to the airport. We still have to drop off our car (Pepe the Peugot) , so we drop off Betsy and Rich and hope that the rental car check in will be much faster than the check out was We are also concerned that our "incident" in the desert (and any resulting damage) are going to boondoggle us as well.

Sure enough, the first dude sees the crumpled front licence plate and gets down on his knees to survey the undercarriage. He calls his boy over, and he proceeds to do the same. They don't speak any english, however, so after telling them we have a flight leaving immediately, they send us on our way with the instructions to check in at the main office in the airport. We decide to make a run for it, and check in at the office only if we have time. The short answer is that we do have time, and we don't get in trouble for the damage to the undercarriage. We even have time to grab a muffin from dunkin' doughnuts (our first food of the day at 1:30), and we make our flight just fine.

Two hours later, and we're debating rental cars for 30 minutes in the parking lot outside of the airport. Betsy and Rich have about 250 pounds of stuff with them (Carrie and I have 57), but the larger vehicles are very expensive. We eventually settle on a Toyota Yaris, which despite its small size still features a magical trunk that swallows most of our gear. Off we head for Pucon, a small city that all of the books agree is one of the true highlights of Chile.

The drive itself is great, with the new found rain and trees making us feel more at home after all of the aridness of the past 9 days. After an hour or so we arrive in Villacarta, the bigger and more blue collar sister of Pucon (but very beautiful in a rustic old west sort of way).


The remaining 30 minutes to Pucon is full of extremely expensive (and beautiful) resorts and vacation homes along the huge lake that stretches between the two towns. Pucon itself is very lovely, and it quickly becomes the favorite city that we have visited. It is roughly 8 x 8 blocks, and it is full of restaurants, bars, and adventure tour companies offering rafting, mountaineering, mountain biking, rock climbing, and pretty much anything else in that vein.










We check into Ecole!, an extremely cute eco-lodge full of natural wood and plants and the highest concentration of tourists we've seen (mostly europeon and U.S.).

We have dinner at the restaurant (salmon and a delicious vegetarian lasagna and our first meal of the day at 8:00), and the girls retire as the boys strike at to explore to walk the 8 blocks of strip. 20 minutes later, we return to the little bar in our hotel for a couple of Schopps (the name for draft beer in Chile) and a game of gin rummy. Off to bed after a very long day, with excitement mounting to spend a full day exploring the charms of beautiful Pucon...