Three Day Weekend

Happy belated Easter!  Semana Santa (Holy Week) is a big deal here, so school ended Thursday at lunchtime and my host family had a trip planned!  We left early Friday morning and drove 3 hours southeast to Pucón, Chile.  It's a major tourist destination in the region because there's a concentration of beautiful natural landscape nearby: several huge lakes, mountains, volcanoes, waterfalls, hot springs, etc.  It was so gorgeous! I don't think any of these pictures capture it well.  But I tried!  

So we got there Friday.  We met up with some cousins and an uncle and the grandparents there, in a little cabin/condo.  Here's the view from the sidewalk: 

Friday afternoon my host siblings and cousin and I played cards/Jenga while the adults got settled (notice that I do not include myself in that group) and, much to our amusement, our Jenga game had to end without a loser because there were no more moves to be made.  I have never seen that before so of course I had to take a picture. 

But then we went to see some waterfalls called the Ojos de Caburgua!  According to wikipedia the water comes from Lake Caburgua (which we also saw, hang on just a sec) via "underground infiltration."  I had to look it up because basically the water just pours out of the earth into the bluest natural pool I've ever seen.  I stubbornly refused to believe the blue was natural, but my host dad explained it's from the rocks at the bottom or something.  You can't see the deep blue that well in these pictures, but it's there... 

It's called "ojos," "eyes," because it's like a face crying

that little guy in the front would be a host cousin, a 10-yo bundle of energy, and in the back is another uncle.  We were all trying very hard not to slip here 

Along the trails around the waterfalls (which were very root-y, as you can see) we found an adorable kitten and my host mom spent about 5 minutes trying to convince the rest of the group that we should take it home with us.  It was pretty damn cute, I'll give her that, but we left him where we found him.  

                                       

Then we went to see Lake Caburgua itself.  Everyone else was dismayed to see that the water level was much lower than the last time they saw it (summer is the dry season here, so it hasn't rained in a while), but I still thought it was pretty!  Look at it, how could you not?

even all the way down here in Chile there are gingers, thank goodness

 Ok, Day 2!  We went to the Volcano Villarrica, which you can see from everywhere in Pucón as well as Villarrica (the neighbor town that obviously got preference when they were naming things.  Or maybe it was there before Pucón, I don't know).  Anyway, it had just rained and the day was cloudy anyway, so up there everything was green and it was so foggy that we could hardly see anything.  Including the volcano peak itself.  But no matter, because the setting was so surreal that I felt like I was on a movie set or something.  We set off along a path to see come craters up close without knowing that the path was 5k, and ended up turning back after about 1.5k.  Ooof it was exhausting.  But tell me this doesn't look like we wandered into some godswood on the set of Game of Thrones!  I loved it. 

Then that afternoon we went to some hot springs!  There are bunches throughout the mountains around Pucón, and it was a beautiful drive.  We finally ended up at one called los Pozones, where there are 5-6 pools (each a different temperature) along a strip next to the river, which you can also go into.  We wanted to try the river (not first, of course) and oh my GOD it was cold but it was fun.  Quite the experience! 

this pool was the hottest, and Francisca and I tried it but quickly decided it was unbearable so switched to another where we could put mud on our faces and relax a bit

Over the trip we ate a lot of seafood.  Even though Pucón is on the Western side of Chile, relatively close to Argentina, there was a lot of fresh seafood everywhere (maybe for the tourists?).  So we ate crab claws and shrimp and a bunch of stuff I couldn't identify.  The shrimp we ate hot, tossed with noodles, but everything else was cold, dipped in various mayo sauces.  Sadly, garlic sauce does not appear to be in the Chilean repertoire.

Then Easter!  The sun finally came out on Sunday, and we went to see the lake on which sits Pucón.  It's called Lake Villarrica (surprise) and Villarrica also sits on the same lake, but down a ways.  It's huge.  And beautiful.  And, unfortunately for our plans, freezing cold.

the volcano! finally I can see it

I couldn't get both sides in one picture.  Told you it was big

this volcano is such a tease

this was as far in as we made it...

much to everyone's amusement, I keep finding myself friends with street dogs such as these

And then we came back home to Angol and ate papas fritas (homemade french fries) because none of the 7 places we looked had empanadas!  I'll find them someday.  It was still a fantastic weekend even though there were no empanadas : )