Swimming in the Salt...

While in the desert (San pedro Atacama) we took a tour to some of the famous lagoons...Laguna Cejar, Laguna Tebiquinche and Laguna Ojo!! Each lake was amazing...imagine floating with no effort at all....Swimming in Laguna Cejar was an amazing experience. The high salt concentration makes you float so you can lie on the surface and feel like you are lying on a lilo. You can swim freestyle with your head out of the water and when you try to swim you have to make an effort to push your legs back into the water. If you stand up without touching the bottom, you can bob up and down with your chest sticking out of the water, its hillarious. It is an incredible feeling.

When you get out, your skin starts to feel tighter, like it has a mud pack on and soon you get a crust of white salt all over when the water dries off. A jump into laguna ojo solved that problem and took off all the salt! Then we travelled down the bumpy road to Tebiquinche the salt flats....what a BEAUTIFUL place it was!!!!!!! It looked like a huge flat snow field...it was amazin!! The photos we got here where magical, the colours of everything was out of this world!

Pucón

FEB TRIP TO THE SOUTH

My journey to the south of Chile 1st began in Pucon, I had heard of an active volcano you can climb there and great rafting opportunites. Volcano Villarica is almost 3000 meters high and towers over the tiny village, puffing smoke from its crater like a toy steam train. I decided to do the 8am climb to avoid the lazy lot who ascend four hours later. Equipped with everything u could possibly imagine we climbed for a shattering five hours to get to the crater, over boulders and rocks and snow. I was a wee bit scared seeing how high we had to go up and the fact that it was an active volcano. I asked our guide a French-Canadian Ricky Martin look-a-like, to reassure me that we would indeed have good warning if the volcano decided to erupt. Oh yes, he said, the smell of burning flesh is very distinctive. Happy days!!!

Standing at the crater was...emmmm great... the sulphur burns your nose, makes your eyes sting and tastes like crap. The best bit though, was coming back down. We put on extra waterproofs, helmets, and a plastic nappy-like thing round your ass, and then luged down the whole 3 kilometers. It was fantastic!!!!!!!! It took us an hour to come down what we had climbed in five. Plus we passed all the losers who started their climb at 12, so I screamed really loudly and shouted "Not long now!" which was a big fat lie. hahah!!

After spending the next day teaching myself how to walk again I thought it was time for some hot hot hot...termas!!! We went to Termas Geometricas...and wow, it was DELICIOUS!!! A dozen hot springs, and a freezin cold waterfall at the end. I think we spent easy 5 hours there lapping up the roasting water which was heated from the volcanoe...which I believe was 37 degrees!!

As far as rafting goes, I thought it was gonna be a wee beginners touch, o no...the chileans like to "rip the arse out of it". Rapids here in Pucon reach a level 6...the higest u can get and we reached a level 5...whitewater rafting...it was AWESOME!!!

Then came my bus ticket to Puerto Varas.........