Parque Huerquehue

Everyone in Pucon is here to hike the volcano. But the weather has been anything but cooperative--raining, snowing, and windy--so a town full of traveling hikers has been forced to seek alternatives. Today everyone had the same idea: to hike Parque Huerquehue. A second bus and driver had to be commandeered to transport everyone.

 

An hour later, I arrived at the park with my hiking buddies for the day: a Canadian, a German, and a Dutch. I've spent a lot of time with Europeans, Aussies, and Americans on this trip so it was nice to hang out with a Canadian for the first time in awhile. We talked about Smarties, the Globe and Mail, toques, and other bits of life that define Canada for me.

 

As we started the hike, I was struck by how green everything was. The same rains that have kept me away from the volcano have made the park dazzle with a dozen shades of green.

 

The clouds hung low and, as we reached the first lake, mist rose from its surface. All this haziness and stillness made the view look like a Hollywood horror film set; "a group of college pals headed to the woods for a weekend of partying, but none of them would survive" sort of thing.

 

The trees were gorgeous, massive. Some would have looked at home in the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. I got inside this one which nature had hollowed out all the way to the top.

 

Our destination was a trio of lakes less than two hours away. On the way, we passed some waterfalls. It's easy to become blasé about waterfalls in Chile since there are so many of them. I thought this one, cascada Trufulco, had potential as a water slide, if you could just soften up the jagged rocks a little bit.

 

We continued our uphill trek along a wide and well groomed path. It was muddy and slippery in a few spots but much less so than I had expected. We were able to leapfrog ahead of a group of twenty German senior citizens and arrived at the lakes before too long.

 

It was still cloudy/foggy/misty/whatever, but the lakes looked so serene and peaceful I didn't mind. We visited all three (they looked remarkably similar to each other) and, as my hands were absolutely freezing and one of us was leaving Pucon tonight, we opted to not add another two hours to the next set of lakes and turned around to catch the early bus back to town. As we were leaving the lakes, it started to snow. It's been awhile since I've seen it snow outside of a city or town, so we paused for a minute to admire the heavy flakes before carrying on.

 

Despite the cold, it was a lovely day in a beautiful park. (But I'm still crossing my fingers for the volcano!)