Adventures in Pucon

Pucon and Puerto Varas (both in Chile) have been my favourite two places of the trip so far. I think it’s fair to say I’m attracted to warm places more than cold. Both Pucon and Puerto Varas are lakefront towns, surrounded by protruding isolated volcanoes. It was amazing visiting them both in January as we had beautiful blue-bird days with highs of 30 degree days.

We had 6 full days in Pucon, 4 days of adventure, and 2 days of downtime at the start and end. I was getting over a head cold when we first arrived, so we saved the two big adventure days for the end.

We stayed at Chili Kiwi Hostel which was recommended to us by a few people. We ended up meeting James the hostel manager, who yes, is a Kiwi living in Chile. The hostel was epic, probably the coolest vibed hosted we have stayed at, including the location of it. It was basically right on the waterfront, with a view of Volcán Villarrica. The hostel had tree houses to stay in and lounge in, a balcony surrounding the dorm rooms on second floor, two kitchens, and a bar with deliciously cheap drinks! We stayed in a dorm room for most of our time but also stayed in the Kombi van parked in the garden for our last two nights.

On our days off from the big adventures we wandered around the town and walked along Playa Grande, the beach off to the side of Pucon. I found this drink (called Mote con Huesillo) which I had seen a lot of the locals drinking during our time in Chile. I decided to give it a go myself, and it did not disappoint. It is a peach syrup drink, with a dried peach in it, and with cooked wheat. Sounds random, but it worked. We found a popular ice cream store which we paid our respects to a few of the days/nights during our time. I also went for a little shop as I realised I wanted another fun outfit to wear around hostels, etc. Most of the clothes I brought were too practical and boring..

We did 2 seperate day walks in Huerquehue National Park. The first one was the easier of the two, called Los Lagos. This was about 14km total, and ~700 m vert. The bus we needed to take back to Pucon left at either 1.20pm or 5.10pm, so we had to make a choice whether we wanted to do the walk super quick, or super slow. We chose super quick, which meant we didn’t have a heap of time to take everything in but I think it was the right call.

We did Cerro San Sebastian as our second walk in Huerquehue National Park. This was one of the coolest day hikes I’ve done before. Every 30 minutes the scenery seemed to change. This walk took us about 6 hours all up (with a lot of long breaks as the bus back to Pucon wasn’t until 5.10pm). It was about ~1100 m vert.

We had one rainy day while there (the rest we had amazing weather), so we decided to use it for a water activity. We went Hydrospeeding down a river! You basically get given these glorified flutterboard/boogie boards and you hoon down the rapids single file following the instructor. At first I was like pffft it can’t be that important we follow the instructor, but I quickly realised if you don’t take their path you can easily get yourself stuck or hit against rocks which wasn’t very fun. The knees took a bit of a beating but we enjoyed every cold minute on that river!

Our final big activity, and the most exciting and tiring, was climbing Volcán Villarrica, the thing to do when visiting Pucon. The top of the Volcano was about 2,800 m, and I seem to recall we started somewhere around 1,300 m? So yep, a lot of elevation gained, over only 5 km. Straight up. It was my first time using crampons and using (holding) an ice axe which was cool in itself. 80% of the climb was on snow.

This is the second most active volcano in Chile, with its last eruption in 2015 (google photos from this if interested). At the top you can look right into the volcano (no you can’t see lava which I was secretly hoping for). Just stinky steam coming out of it. The views from the top of surrounding volcanoes were also just as impressive. And for the best part of the experience, the down! We got to slide the whole way down the snow sections on our bums. We put on the layers provided to us at the top, including a waterproof nappy type thing to allow us to slide on our bums. We also got given a small tobogán like thing. The route was already paved out in the snow which had twists and turns like a hydro slide (I’m guessing to slow us down). I think me and Lucas both ended up zooming up and over the sides on a couple occasions.

We managed to make a friend group of about 10+ people all from around the world while staying at Chili Kiwi Hostel. If we didn’t directly do activities with them, we were always having breakfast or dinner together. Or a couple cheap beverages from the bar. This group of friends I’ll remember for some time! Hasta luego Pucon, time for Santiago 👋

MacKenzie

Jan 31, 2025