Puerto Varas canyoning and climbing

Puerto Varas is a small, German influenced tourist town with quite some activities to offer: from hiking to rafting and horseback riding etc. Located between massive mountains (or volcanoes, to be exact) and next to a pretty lake, it offers also quite some views. Snowcapped and captivating, the volcano Osorno dominates the landscape. Somehow my eyes were drawn to it all the time, and it worked as a land mark in a way (you could always figure out which way to go depending on how you were facing the volcano).

But not only was the town pretty, but so was our hostel: Margoya 2. Situated in an old historic wooden house, filled with colours and wood and the friendliest staff, it was extremely inviting! We had only booked 2 nights but luckily could extend our stay one more night.

Monsterburger

Volcan Osorno

From the other side

Chris had been ill with the flu on the boat but since he was well on his way to recovery, we decided to find us some climbing! We heard a rumour about a bouldering hall somewhat nearby so we packed our shoes and started walking. After some searching we stumbled into a yard where a really shabby warehouse building stood (barely..) with a brand new sign: Climbhouse!

Of course it was empty and locked...damn! And no opening hours mentioned anywhere. Gladly a man working in the next yard saw us, and advised us that the people would be coming at 17.00... and it was 16.50. Fantastic. And indeed they did show up and such nice people they were! The gym itself was also nice: not the best mattresses or routes for that matter but it was a cute. And all kept and managed by one guy who actually works with something completely else and kind of keeps up the gym just for a hobby. Nice effort!

Climbhouse

Boulderhappiness

More of Volcan Osorno

While bouldering, we met a nice local guy called Sebastian who invited us to go climbing to a sector called Metri the next day with him and his friends! We could borrow all the gear and we only paid for the gas. How excellent. First the idea was to leave early and come back early but well, the schedules here tend to be...flexible I'd say ;) So the next day, not too early, we were picked up from the hostel by Sebastian and met another car full of people at a gas station and then continued to a beautiful sector called Metri, about an hour from Puerto Varas down south.

We had to hike up a bit in a forest to get to the rock but there it was: pretty rock and nicely bolted sport routes for everyone! I could still feel yesterdays inside bouldering so I took it easy (don't have quite the endurance anymore for two days in a row after such a long break :() but it felt nice again to climb and be outside. The people were great and we got so many recommendations for places to visit and to see in Santiago and around. Also, we saw a humming bird! It was flying and enjoying some nectar from the flowers right next to us. After some climbing we did an expedition to find some boulders in a nearby sector. We did find them but sadly a proper cleaning would've been needed to be able to climb them.

Looking for boulders in the forest

Nice rock

Metri sector

Kolibri aka humming birdie!!

In the evening, when we finally got back home, we chatted and dined with some nice folk from the hostel. One of them, Steve (a 62-year-old Englishman) whom we had already met on the boat to Puerto Montt, told us about his amazing cycling trips. He was now travelling with a bike and had been cycling the whole of Carretera Austral in Chile for starters. Also, he'd been cycling around India and Nepal, and he used to also climb and do mountaineering and trail running and huh! What a cool guy! I wish I'll have as much or even half the energy when I'm his age.

As I told you, this town was full of activities and one of them was canyoning, which is something we had never tried before. We decided to try it out since it is not everywhere one can do this strange sport. Canoyning is kind of like rafting but without a raft, or well, the point is to go down a river and waterfalls and such by floating and rappelling and sliding through some natural waterslides. Also, some high jumps to the water were to be expected. Sounded exciting, why not! Unfortunately, the day was not sunny and warm and it was my turn to have the flu. I took some ibuprofein and finnrexing and whatnot in the morning to cheat the body but the idea of spending hours in freezing cold water felt the most moronic. I'm glad I still went though.

Our group consisted of 7 tourists and 2 guides. After riding an hour to the National Park and to the river Rio Blanco, we geared up with wetsuits, helmets, gloves and boots and looked like complete idiots :D Then we hiked, in these clothes, about 40 minutes up the river to the starting point. I wasn't feeling cold then, I have to say!

"Okay, so head first and slide!", the guides commanded and so we did. We slid down a perfectly polished rock, head first and back first and then a couple of meters fall head and back first and wow, it felt pretty odd :D It was really truly strange: fun and silly looking, somewhat scary too and I wanted to question the safety (I mean, natural pools, between rocks and stuff, back first!?) But they did this everyday and the river had made the rock so smooth that it really wasn't a problem to slide down. I did get some bruises but that mostly because of my wide hips not fitting through the narrow passages heheh. It's quite difficult to explain this canyoning thing but I will link some pictures from the company's website (I couldn't bring my own camera).

Picture is from here: http://margouya2.com/hostal_margouya_Puerto_Varas_canyoning_expeditions.html

Here you can find some more pics: http://www.pachamagua.com/galeria/galeria.swf

And here some videos: http://www.pachamagua.com/index2.html

We stopped for lunch next to the river after some sliding and floating and jumping. I was freezing. I was really so cold that I wasn't sure I could continue, the thought of getting back into the water was just repulsive. Hypothermia, I'm sure I'll get that, I thought. I couldn't feel my toes.

But off we went and I didn't even get hypothermia, so lucky me! The highest jump was really cool, about 6 meters high and into a deep pool next to a waterfall. After that we rappelled down another huge waterfall and then jumped down the last 4 meters to end the day. We had quite an audience for the rappelling and the last jump: the National Park visitors came to check the beautiful waterfall but on top of that they got to see us doing some extreme sports next to it hehheh. All and all, super nice! Truly a new experience!

I was happy to change into warm dry clothes and head back home though :) Our new friend Beth (US) from the group came with us to do some grocery shopping and joined us for a dinner in the hostel! Wine, tortillas and ice-cream plus excellent company = perfect end for the day.

Volcan Osorno in the evening

The next day was to be our last in Varas, we had bought tickets to an overnight bus to Santiago, so we just cooked, walked around the town and did some shopping before packing the last bits and heading to the street where the bus was supposed to go from. In Varas, there's no terminal which is quite confusing: all the different companies have buses leaving from all around the city. But we had called to check and we were in the right place already about an hour too early!

A bus came with a sign saying Santiago 19.50, our tickets said 20.20. but we still asked: the bus driver told us to wait. So no worries, we thought, we're in the right place and there was even another Chilean lady going to the same bus with us so we weren't concerned. Then another bus came, saying 20.00 Viña del Mar. We looked at it but since it had a different destination and different time, we thought, naah! The lady was talking on the phone and didn't move either and I didn't feel like going asking again, especially since the details on the sign were so different, so I stood there looking at this bus. The driver and other bus staff members were looking at us three for a couple of minutes and then they drove off. I had a bad feeling.

Yeah, that was our bus and we had missed it. It had been right there infront of us!? Only our tickets said Santiago, 20.20 and not Viña del Mar 20.00. Also, the bus people had a list of names, our names and they knew they were missing three people and we were the only three people on the bus stop!!!?! I was mad! Also to myself for just not asking, which I could've easily done, but mostly because of the stupidity of this company!!! Why oh why cannot they write the final destination of the bus to the ticket as well so we'd know which bus to look for, and change the departure time or at least shout once: "Santiago?" when they know they are missing people!!?? AND ESPECIALLY WHEN THE PEOPLE MISSING HAVE SILLY FOREIGN NAMES LIKE HOLOPAINEN? AND THERE ARE TWO OBVIOUS FOREIGNERS AND A CHILENO RIGHT THERE AND NO ONE ELSE!? IDIOTS! (sorry)

Every cloud have a silverlining or something similar and so did ours. Firstly, the Chilean lady Roxana (?), who also missed the bus, managed to reach the bus company by phone and also her brother who came to the stop to meet us. Together they managed to insist on the phone that missing the bus was not our fault but the company's fault. Roxana and her brother helped us also by taking us to the office and solving the thing out for us there...again. I'm quite sure that without them we wouldn't have gotten any compensation - hell, we wouldn't have even been able the reach the bus company anymore that evening.

The problem was that it was the end of the local summer holidays and so all the tickets to Santiago were sold out for days onwards, with other companies too. Fortunately, since we had bought our tickets from the internet, the company said they'd get us new tickets somehow (and not return the money, like they did for the lady), but the only available seats were for the next day, from Puerto Montt to Osorno and Osorno to Santiago. "Okay, but where are we supposed to sleep tonight then?", we asked. It was already pretty late and we knew the hostels were almost fully booked. The office lady looked confused, and started calling again, to her boss we presumed. We thanked Roxanne and her brother warmly before they left. The brother was great, he actually apologized for all of Chile for this mess, haha, he was pretty pissed off with the bus company.

After a while the office lady said vamos and out we went. We were about to load our backpacks into a van that was waiting for us outside when she told us that we'd be sleeping at her house. What now?! We were a bit appalled, apparently her boss had refused the compensation for the night so she felt bad for us and offered her own sofa. We thanked but no thanked and said we'd find something, though we didn't have high hopes. Then another lucky strike in all this misfortune! Eventhough our lovely Margoya 2 didn't have space, they found us a free bed in Pachamagua, the hostel and canoyning operator we already knew! Excellent!

So next day we had to rush to Puerto Montt in the morning to get our tickets to Osorno and Santiago for the evening, and then we had of course the whole day to spend in the somewhat mangy town of Puerto Montt. After a little bit of walking we figured, hey there's a cinema, let's go see a movie! The two options without Spanish dubbing were Robocop and The Monuments Men, so we chose the latter. Great! Quick lunch and then to the movies!

Except that the movie was cancelled due to some problem with the projector or whatever. NOOO, what have we done wrong, we thought, with all this bad luck!? Well, didn't help much to complain, so a new plan was needed. We decided to go check out a bouldering hall some kilometers away, but with not much hope that it would be open. And surely it was closed and would only open at 17.00 (our bus left at 17.45 so that's that then). We walked back slowly, ate some strawberries and were happy to board the bus and finally get to the night bus to Santiago. One more happy accident in this sorrow was that we had messed up our booking for the hostel in Santiago, so if we would've arrived a day earlier, we wouldn't have had a bed. A bit of farfetched but hey, positive thinking right!?

The closed climbing hall