Chilean life lesson #37: Never show up to South America without your best good hiking boots and your sporkife.
Well, I should probably catch you up on the latest of my traverses through South America. This weekend we hit up a quaint little town in the South of Chile they like to call Pucón.
I grew really fond of all the time spent on buses. They treat you like royalty. First comes the prepackaged manjar cookie. They draw your curtains for you at naptime. Then play Latin American pop music really loud. Sometimes they wake you up so that they can tuck you into bed. Then you get to watch movies that you would never, ever have the opportunity to watch otherwise.
The first day we hit up some of the special little treasures around Púcon, swam in a lake, explored some lagunas. I lost track of all the waterfalls. It was the good soul melting kind of beautiful. We finished the day lounging around some natural hotsprings.
I woke up the next morning at the crack of something to hike the smokin' volcano nestled up next to the town, but the guide told us that it was too foggy to summit that day and to try again next time.
Instead a couple of friends and I decided to spend the day and possibly camp Parque Nacional. Of course rather than taking the bus like normal human beings we decided that it would be just the right amount of ambitious to bike the 38 kilometers up the rocky mountain. Well, we gave it the ol' college try and hitchiked the rest of the way with a new Chilean pal that worked with "cars and cows." Thanks Luís!
Okay, and I can just say mmmhmm? Our journey took us through some rural back roads where we saw lots of the indigenous campesinos and Mapuche villages were. The inhabitants live and work completely off the land. We ate wild blackberries off the road and pet some mountain goats and watched the cow carts stroll by. It all felt so harmonious.
I tried to rewrangle our group for hiking the next morning, but come 8:30 AM the next morning only two of us braved the lack of sleep we all got the night before to catch the bus to Caburga.
My friend Drew and I spent the day hiking Huerquehue National Park. Again it was unreal how beautiful everything is.
Here is Drew with our adopto-puppy that followed us all 10 miles up and down the mountain. You sly dog.
Here I am sitting pensively by a river.
How many perfect days does a person get in a lifetime?
Keep it Real
Smo.
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