17/10/2019 – Travel day Santa Cruz to Pucon, Chile

We got up early, and walked to the end of the road to a bus heading in the direction of Santiago. We hopped on and closed our eyes. The bus was really full, a mixture of people heading to work and school kids. We got off with most of the other passengers after about an hour, at a place called San Fernando. We managed to find the right bus company and buy a ticket for the next leg of the journey, but had a two hour wait here. Because we have gone a bit off the beaten track todays journey is a little bit higgledy piggledy. We went to the station café and braved the eggs and bread there for breakfast. After managing to pass the hours by pretty easily (we are getting good at this actually!) we boarded the next bus. We were at the front of the top deck, our favourite spot. We intermittently listened to podcasts and dozed off, and I read my book. The journey was just over 7 hours, but pretty comfortable, apart from our hunger! We got off at Temuco station, quite far South now. Here we bought tickets for the final leg of our journey. We only had to wait about half an hour for our next bus. Again front seats of the top deck, which gave us a nice view of the incredible scenery. This part of the journey was just 2 hours. We are in the Chilean lake district now, and the views of the volcano, the lake and the surrounding area did not disappoint. I managed to finish my book just as we were pulling into our destination, Pucon. It feels like a ski town, quite small but also built up. We noticed a few supermarkets and even some branded outdoor gear shops. There are quite a lot of people here, it is dubbed as an adventure tourism hub. We flagged a taxi down and got dropped outside our hostel ‘Chili Kiwi hostal.’ Right on the edge of the lake, and we were just in time to see the dregs of the beautiful orange sunset. Josh and I both had a good feeling already! We got let in, and without pausing too long to marvel at the beauty of the building, the treehouse rooms and the little cabins in the garden, walked in and introduced ourselves. There was a great vibe in the hostel, everyone was having a drink from the bar and socialising, some music playing quietly in the background, and it was so mixed that we actually couldn’t work out who was a guest and who was working/volunteering! We were shown our room, put our bags down, and had a drink with everyone. After saying hi, we excused ourselves and popped down the main road in search of food, stopping at a little place for a burger. It was 21:30 so we were just in time! We went back to the hostel, which had calmed down a lot already, showered and went to bed. All the volunteers stay in the top of the house. Our room is a little attic room with a mattress on the floor, and a window with a view out across the lake.