Hi It has been a while since I last posted - I am chalking up to too much fun and not much time spent in front of the computer. I did take a lot of photos though and I am going to put them in as different posts. This one is about the Volcano Villarrica, in Chile.From the Island of Chiloe, I took a bus / ferry combo to the town of Puerto Varas, where I spent a couple of days, and then headed on to Pucon, which is the northen most town in Chile's lake district, and located in the flank of a massive volacano. From what I read, it is one of the very few active volanos in the world, i.e. there is smoke coming out continuously, and up to three years ago, you could see lava in the crater.
I signed up for a climbing expedition to the volcano which involved a 5 hour climb to 2800 meters starting from a base of 1200 meters. A third of the climb was in ice. It was really exhilirating. The flank of volcano is fairly linear so it's a constant moderate climb, and the view is completely unobstructed. Once we got to the glacier part, we put on crampons and continued climbing. Once at the top, there was a massive crater about 300 meters in diameter with a big hole out of which came out puffs of noxious gases. We could not see the lave but we could hear it splash with great force. It was generally hard to breath, but the view was pretty incredible.
More pictures of the volcano
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