Hot Liquid Magma

Before I write this, I will let you know that I added another post prior to this entry just now.

After El Bolson we said goodbye to our friends James and Patrick who we have traveled with for the past two weeks. They left for the island of Chiloe. David, Su and I moved on to the town of Pucon in Chile. Pucon’s top attraction is Villarrica Volcano, which is right outside of town. It is the most active volcano in South America. We signed with a local tour company to summit the volcano.

The tour company we went with, Politur, was great. Thursday morning we went to their office at 7am to pickup our equipment for the day. We got boots, snowpants, a jacket, gloves, a winter hat, a hard hat, crampons and an ice pick. After trying on all of the equipment we jumped in the van and headed to the volcano. There is a ski resort on the volcano during the winter months. We started at the base of the first lift. We spent about 5 hours hiking up to the top. During the hike, we gained one mile in elevation, or about 5000 feet. First we were below the cloud line, but as we got higher up, we walked through the clouds, and eventually popped out above the cloud line. At this point, the terrain turned to all ice and snow, so we had to put on our crampons and take out our ice picks. It seemed like we were over-equipped at first, but the trail was steep and icy, so the equipment was justified. After walking over a few ridges, we climbed above the cloudline and were able to clearly see the top of the volcano. We slowly made our way up along the side of the volcano until we finally reached the top. Once we made it to the top, we carefully walked along the ridge until we could see what we had hoped to see: hot liquid magma. Here is another picture of the lava, with people standing on the ridge in the distance. We spent only about 20 or 30 minutes on the top. The gasses emitting from the volcano were very strong. We quickly snapped a few more pictures (that is Su) and made our way back down. We were very lucky to have seen the lava becuase often there is too much smoke coming from the volcano to be able to peer inside. Or sometimes the weather is too poor for hiking up the mountain.

Now we are in Santiago for a few days. We will head up north to the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile on Monday morning.