Pucon, Chile

After the music festival was over Laura and I took an 11-hour bus ride down to Pucón, Chile. The first day we arrived we decided to try an activity called “hydrospeed.” Hydrospeed is basically white-water rafting down a river, but floating on a kickboard instead of in a raft. I was terrified of going into the freezing cold water.... luckily these sexy wetsuits, which were the thickest things we've ever seen. We were equipped with a wetsuit, booties, fins, life vest, much-needed helmet, and a kickboard and then plunged down a river of class 4 rapids. It was soo amazing and unlike anything I have ever done before. A serious adrenaline rush and well worth the occasional moments of fearing for our lives ☺.

On our second day, Laura and I did the most popular attraction in Pucón – the Villarrica Volcano hike. Villarrica is one of Chile's most active volcanoes. It is one of only five volcanoes worldwide known to have an active lava lake within its crater.

We woke up at 6am to embark on this 6-hour trek up the volcano. The top half of the volcano is covered in ice, so we had to put on snow gear, complete with crampons and an ice pick. Those should have been big warning signs that this was going to be a hard trek! But no one had warned me about the difficulty of the hike so I didn’t think twice. In fact, many of my friends have done this before, and all had related that it is SO beautiful, fun and totally a must do.... Not one mentioned how hard it would be.

please note how steep the mountain is behind us

hard core with my crampons and ice pick

I kid you not, this hike was the single most difficult physical activity I have ever done. Don't get me wrong it was an amazing view and a feeling of great accomplishment.... but that being said- I was not a happy camper on the way up. From the top we had views of the Andes in all directions. And at 3,000 meters, the highest peak around, we felt like we were on top of the world! On the downside, it was very hard to breathe at the top because of all the sulfuric gas coming out of the volcano. Our company provided gas masks at an additional cost. We decided to tough it out and coughed our way through for the photos opps. The BEST part of the whole thing, though, was the way down. We got to sled down the whole face of the volcano on our butts using our ice pick as a brake.

we made it to the top!

Suggestions for Pucón:

view from our hostel's balcony

We stayed right in the heart of Pucón at La Bicicleta Hostel.  The Owners are extremely nice and can help arrange any activities for you.
 

such delicious food!

Grab a snack or lunch at École - a restaurant in a hostel by the same name, that serves organic, locally grown foods.  Laura and I had such a hard time deciding what we wanted because everything looked so delicious!

Lollapalooza - Chile

I am a huge concert junkie so when I saw that Lollapalooza was planning to do a festival abroad this year in Chile I was immediately interested. As soon as they posted the lineup the deal was sealed. After spending just 12 hours in BsAs Laura and I took an early morning flight to Santiago and met up with my friend Andrea who lives in Montevideo.  Had we planned better, or knew about the festival before Laura booked her flight, she could have gone straight to Santiago and avoided having to pay the reciprocity entrance fee in both Argentina and Chile ($140 USD each).  Oh well hindsight is always 20/20.  It was well worth the trip!

Each day the music didn’t start until the afternoon so we could spend our mornings sightseeing. Trust me there isn’t much to see in Santiago. On Saturday morning, we took a gondola up to Estatua de la Virgen Maria, a big statue of the Virgin Mary on top of a hill that overlooks the city of Santiago. Riding up there made me realize there is no place in Buenos Aires where you can get an aerial view of the city. It was cool to see the entire city spread out below, however Santiago is the smoggiest city ever! WAY worse than LA.

We then set off to the concert venue, Parque O'Higgins, with plenty of time to spare. Or so we thought… Knowing we’d have to go to will call we allowed ourselves two extra hours before the first band we wanted to see. Well… the first day of the festival didn’t get off to a great start as the line for will call was over 3 hours long!  Fortunately, we were savvy enough to BYOB and bartered some of our booze in order to join the thirsty people near the front of the line and cut down our wait time to only about an hour! It then took them 45 minutes to locate our tickets, even with my confirmation email and photo ID. That’s South America for you…its not the most organized continent. After finally making out way into the venue we set off to see what bands were left for the day (we missed Edward Sharpe). We were able to catch the end of Ben Harper before heading to an indoor stadium to watch Empire of the Sun – they put on a crazy show!

Finally we went outside for the headliner: The Killers. This is why I came to the festival. The Killers is one of my favorite bands. In my eyes their lead-singer Brandon Flowers can do NO wrong (Andrea definitely agreed with me). They put on a great show! This is the fourth concert I have been to since arriving in South America and I just have to say that the energy that these people put off is SOO much greater than any show I have ever been to in The States. I’ve never seen so many people jumping up and down and moshing to the music. It was slightly insane but so much fun!

We got there earlier on the second day and were able to spend a lot of time on the grass, drinking our orange Fanta y vodkas while listening to bands from our middle school days. We first watched 311 perform. Laura and I were shocked by how many 311 songs we actually knew. We than went to see Flaming Lips. They put on a great show and Andrea was in absolute heaven! Afterwards we watched Sublime with Rome, The Cold War Kids, and then Kanye West. I was actually impressed by Kanye’s set and felt he did a good job with the festival crowd.

We spent our last day in Santiago doing the most half-assed, exhausted sight-seeing. We went to the Plaza de Armas, Mercado Central, and wandered around some pretty unique and artsy neighborhoods. Like I said, there’s not much to see so it was fine that we only had a few hours.

Suggestions for those traveling to Santiago:
We stayed at Terra Extremus Hostel – a really nice hostel in a great location near Bario Bellavista.

If you are looking for a place to go for breakfast, lunch or dinner check out Patio Bellavista.  I’m pretty sure in our 4 days in town we went there at least once every day.

Walk along Constitucion Street in Bellavista where you will find tons of great looking restaurants as well as bars and clubs. 

Bar Constitucion is a great place to go for fun cocktails. Starting out as a restobar lounge, this place turns into a dance club at night. Go early as on weekend nights they close the doors and start charging around midnight.