It was rather windy when I woke up, but when the sun rose it seemed to calm down. After breakfast with the Canadian guide, I headed to Sol y Nieve to get the equipment I needed and join the tour. The rest of the group was milling around – there were 18 of us and 2 guides. For all his enthusiasm the previous day, I had to admit the guide hadn’t been exaggerating too much – there were indeed several “lindas Argentinas” in the group.
We were all issued with crampons and ice axes, and those who (unlike me) didn’t have hiking gear, were given waterproof overboots and backpacks. Then we all piled into 2 mini buses and were taken up the winding road towards the park entrance where all our equipment – warm clothes, crampons etc. were meticulously inspected by the officious park rangers. I took a secret photo of this process, which seemed a little over the top…
I got chatting to 2 girls from Buenos Aires who were travelling together. One of them introduced herself as “Andrea” and then the other introduced herself as “Andrea”. This seemed needlessly confusing so early in the morning…
Eventually the ranger deemed us all to be “legal” and we started the long uphill walk which was gentle at first. We went quite slowly so there was plenty of opportunity to chat with people. A Spanish teacher from the Netherlands struck up a conversation with me – in Spanish. Obviously being Dutch she spoke perfect English too, but I’m now at the stage where I can converse slowly in Spanish with a patient person one-on-one. Also being a Spanish teacher she was better able to chose words that a non-native speaker would know, so I had a free advanced Spanish course.
The opposite happened with a family of 4 from Buenos Aires, who consisted of the mother plus 3 daughters of about 18-20, and who all wanted to know about my travels, while practicing their English at the same time. After a couple of hours of easy progress with plenty of stops, we all reached the snow line and the guides told people how they should use an ice axe to stop themselves sliding if they slipped.
The day was very warm and the sun beat down incessantly on the steepening snow slopes. Eventually we neared the rim of the volcano and on reaching it the guides called a halt. It transpired that though we were supposed to peer down into the crater from the rim, the guided tour didn’t go round the rim up to the true summit, which was on the opposite side of the crater. Some people from other groups seemed to be doing that, so I sneaked off and got up to the summit and back in the time that we’d been told we could relax on the rim. There was smoke and plenty of sulphur dioxide fumes in the air, though no ash or steam – just an ominous red glow in a hole in the base of the crater…
Getting down was obviously much easier, but was again taken slowly, with more energy spent chatting than anything else. It had indeed been a very sociable day, and back near the trailhead, a group photo was taken of some of us with Andrea’s camera. I arranged to meet Andrea and Andrea later on for a drink – maybe at some point I’ll get a copy of the group photo!
Back in Pucón it felt very hot and sticky. After a long-awaited shower I had a bite to eat with my roommate Tim. Then I managed to get rid of Tim, in order to go to meet up with Andrea and Andrea… In any case these 2 young ladies appeared to have gathered several other admirers in the meantime – there were already 3 Chilean guys and and a Swede with them when I found them at the agreed meeting place! But neither Andrea nor Andrea appeared overly put out by all the attention. Regardless, before I headed back to my hotel I had been presented with 2 phone numbers in Buenos Aires, just in case I might like the idea of a reunion in a month’s time when I am in the Argentine capital. I think it’s reasonable to suppose that I’ll ring one of the numbers when I reach Buenos Aires…