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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nWe go to a lake for a wonderful sunset and afterwards prepare a trip for tomorrow to Tres Lagos. Apparently it is necessary to make a reservation online before coming to the national park. I’m trying to do that on a mobile phone on a way there but the reservation form has 8 stages and if you are not fast enough, you get a timeout and have to start from the beginning. After third unsuccessful attempt, I give up and hope to persuade the ranger when we are there. After 8 km of a tough off-road, we get to the park entrance. A friendly ranger welcomes us: “Do you have a reservation? You need to have a reservation to enter the park.” You don’t say… There are three cars standing behind the ranger office. At half past 10. We buy the entrance ticket. I sigh, take Alenas phone which happens to have some signs of mobile signal and give the reservation form one last try. When I’m at the seventh page, the ranger tells me: “Just go, it’s fine, you can show me later”. Well, now I will finish the reservation when I’m already that far! Apparently, they need the reservations in order to get money from the government. Number of tickets sold is not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trek itself is really nice, has two waterfalls on the way and in the upper part it gets quite snowy. Near the lagoons, there are many Araucarias, the national tree of Chile. Now we know what was that weird thing they sold in the supermarket. Araucaria seeds! We should bring a couple to Simon for his delicious pesto with pine nuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We meet two groups of four. Everyone suspiciously walking with a wooden walking stick. Then we realize they have a guide who probably made them create a wooden stick out of a tree branch. Well, after the bridge ends in the water, we don’t meet any more groups and go trough deep snow to the next lagoon. The scenery is really beautiful, so we get out our bread rolls with cheese and make a break there. The cheese in Chile you can buy in supermarkets doesn’t really have a taste and are all similar to Edam or Gouda. But if you’re hungry, you don’t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the way back, we hurry up a bit as we want to catch the sun set at the lake at 6 pm. The ranger is not there anymore, so we save time showing him the bloody reservation for the park. Nevertheless, the sun set plan is not going to happen as there is a huge traffic jam on the way to Pucon. After a few minutes, the road with 2 lanes (one in each direction) becomes a road with three lanes. One with traffic jam, one with careful drivers going in the opposite direction. In the middle, the lane is suited for cars that don’t feel like waiting in the traffic jam and want to take over. They turn the warning lights on and go 90 km\/h straight against the cars in the opposite direction. We hear a lot of car horns but surprisingly no crash. Then a bus full of passengers joins the middle lane. It doesn’t have problems as every car rather goes to the defensive right lane than to face the bus. Finally, an ambulance comes and goes through the middle lane. Virtually everyone joins the ambulance and takes over the traffic jam. We are just staring at what is happening at the moment and keep standing in the traffic jam. While watching this, I call the rental car company to ask if we can return the car next day in the evening instead of 9 in the morning. We are told that Temuco is not a really nice city and we don’t want to spend the whole day there until 8pm when our bus to Valparaiso comes. First, the rental company has a chaos in the bookings and tell me, it’s ok as we picked up he car in the evening as well. I ensure them we picked the car in the morning, so they tell me they will check with the other office and I should call them tomorrow at nine. Well, that doesn’t really help, because if they say no, we are 200 km far away and don’t make it in time anyway. So we decide to risk it and hope we can keep the car one more day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we make it home in one piece and our host tells me about the eruption of the volcano Villarica in 2015 and how he slept at the rooftop terrace to watch the show. Then he recommends me a park for tomorrow – Conguillio. Apparently, some dinosaur movies were shooted there and it is Vincent’s favourite national park. Parts are only accessible by 4×4 vehicles, but the part we want to visit should be fine. As it is more than two hours drive, we go to bed early to leave before 7 on the next morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But first, we have to pay for the accommodation. I already described the pain of the local tax on hotel stay. We already have our 50 EUR + 5 USD prepared (remember, you have to pay in a foreign currency). Well, we learn a new rule tonight. The paper you get at the airport when entering a country has to have under “Motivo” the word “turistico”. For some reason, our reason for visiting Chile says “Other”, so he insists we pay in pesos with the tax. So we go to a supermarket where you can receive cash back when paying by card (ATMs charge you around 6 EUR and are none nearby).<\/p>\n\n\n\n New day, same problem – ticket reservation for the national park. This time, you have to buy it online and not only does the ticket cost solid 10 EUR (half for Chile residents, as usual), but you have to pay in USD via paypal which ends up being more than 13 EUR. I try to explain to the ranger that it seems a bit flawed, but he has no idea about the ticket buying – he only controls the ticket codes. Finally, he understands (offline google translate is not that bad after all) and tells me he will help me so that it doesn’t cost me more than the official price. I write down my name, nationality, passport number and license plate of the car in his book, as usual when entering a national park, and then he tells me we can go. “But we haven’t paid yet, can we pay you now?” “No, that’s fine, you can go,” he replies. Apparently, his duty is to have as many people registered as a visitor of the park in his book and not to retrieve entrance money. Well, we don’t argue and drive further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The park itself is rather suited for a car tourism. There is a more than 20 km long road with stops at lagoons and viewing points. The first part is just lava everywhere and view of the volcano. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Further, we go through a forest and see some lagoons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we go further, the holes in the road get worse and worse and the first gear of our Polo becomes my best friend for the next hour. We could stay easily one more day in the park, but we have to return the car in Temuco until 6 pm, so we turn back and hope we don’t get a flat tire on the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything works fine except for one tiny detail. The car should be returned with a full gas tank. No problem, there are many gas stations on the way. The first two have a really long queue – apparently the only gas stations around. So we keep going towards Temuco. Somehow, every gas station has a queue longer than the previous one. When we enter Temuco, the queue of the gas station there counts something between 200 and 300 cars. Finally a shell station without a queue. It’s closed. People running around with petrol cans like ants. Is there an apocalypse coming tomorrow? Did we miss something? Screw it, so we return the car half full, better than not at all. We drive the car to the yard of the rental company. It’s full of cars parked very tightly three cars per row so it’s impossible to get a car from the back or middle part. Apparently not many customers at the moment. They let us park the car in the only free spot and start going around. Damn, there is this bump on the bodywork below the right door that I missed when taking over the car in Puerto Montt, hopefully they don’t want to charge me that. Hopefully Alena parked tightly enough on the right side as the bump is only visible when standing further away. The mechanic goes around the car for a few minutes and then his two colleagues in the office start counting how much do I have to pay extra. It takes them more than 15 minutes. I start to sweat a little. Alena waits outside in the meantime with the backpacks as only one customer is allowed in the office. Finally, we get to pay the extra day and the refill of the tank for a very fair price. No scratch, no extra driver, no one-way fee. I double check if this is really everything. Today the Chilean chaos in saves us quite some money. So we grab the backpacks and go to the restaurant across the street before we go to the night bus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The bus station is 5 km away so we ask in the restaurant if they can call us a taxi. The next free taxi is in two hours. Well, let’s hope Uber works here. It works, but the driver comes in 15 minutes instead of 7 as promised. Apparently the traffic is really bad on Friday night. But we should still arrive at the bus terminal 15 minutes before the bus departure, hopefully it’s enough. Older driver Antonio helps us with the bags and as if he knew we are in a rush, he switches to a complete “Loco” (crazy) mode finding holes between cars and going 90 km\/h in the city at times (just a guess, I didn’t dear to open my eyes). All while not fastening his seat belt and assessing and refusing uber rides on a phone on the left knee and checking the GPS navigation on the other phone on the right knee. We’ve had some crazy rides from the European point of view, but this one is by far on the top. It felt like in a computer game where if you go fast, everything gets blurry and then there is a mum with a stroller and the car can instantly break. I’m really happy about two things. First that I didn’t tell the driver at the beginning to hurry up. And second, that I didn’t sit in the front seat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we get to the bus station just to realize that the bus is coming 4 hours late. They are no signs, you have to ask at the ticket office of the company. Apparently there is a strike of truck drivers and some buses got stuck. So that’s why people where running to the gas stations like crazy! They were scared the truck drivers will strike longer and not deliver the fuel to the gas stations. The announcements at the bus stations are in fast Spanish without repeating key facts and without a fixed structure. I usually only understand “Santiago”. Well, let’s hope the bus doesn’t come suddenly earlier. Every hour, I do a casual check at the ticket office (thank God they are open at night unlike the cheap companies) if the bus is still expected at midnight. All later buses of the same companies to our destination leave earlier so I am getting slowly worried. Shortly before midnight, lots of buses come creating a chaos at the bus station. I run to the ticket office one more time to ask about the platform where our bus should leave (once again, no signs at the bus station, the signs on the buses are not necessarily correct and the announcements are very hard to understand. Luckily, I run into our bus driver picking up the list of passengers at the ticket counter. Relieved, we follow the bus driver to the bus saying Santiago even though it’s going further to Valparaiso and prepare for our sleep at salon cama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pucon – sleeping at the bottom of the Volcano While we are boiling our skin at the hot springs of<\/p>\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n