When one door closes...

After 4 weeks, I felt so at home in Santiago that it was difficult to leave it all behind again. But I know from experience that everything good that´s ever happened to me, only had a chance to occur because I closed a few other doors behind me. So, when it was time for me to get on the nightbus to Pucon, I decided to pull the switch and prep myself for whatever was about to happen next.

As the bus pulled into Pucon Station at 7 a.m. yesterday morning, I realised how much more confident I´ve become these last three months on the road. The very thought of having to navigate my way through a deserted muddy road in an unfamiliar environment at the crack of dawn to find myself some accomodation, would previously have scared me beyond measure. But as I was walking along the road, the only thing going through my mind was: "Bloody hell, look at that volcano!!"

I found my accomodation with the help of a local streetdog. For reasons unbeknownst to me, it decided to walked alongside me that morning and it only left my side to scope out the view around the corners, as if to make sure the path was safe enough for me to walk along. After about 15 minutes, the dog ran up ahead and came to a halt next to some sort of fence. When I caught up with it, it appeared to have led me straight to a hostel-entrance.

My first encounter with the hostelcrowd was rather embarrassing, as I had to greet the girl that opened the door with: "Disculpe señorita, pero, créo qué yo he rompado su timbre!" (Sorry, but I think I just broke your doorbell). My next line was: "Quiero una cama en su dormitorio más barrato. Pero, digame, hay arañas de rincon aqui cerca?" (I would like a bed in your cheapest dorm. But, tell me, are there any Chilean Recluse spiders around here?). She burst out laughing, which puzzled me, as I am never more serious than when enquiring about the whereabouts of poisonous spiders.

At any rate, I settled in very quickly and by 6pm, I had been offered a job at one of the local outdoor companies for the duration of the season. I gave it some thought and have decided that if the boss is willing to give me three weeks off in January to travel with my mum, I will accept the joboffer and stay in Pucon for three months. I have a meeting with the boss in about an hour to discuss it all. The way I see it, working for a company that specialises in volcano-treks, rafting and canopy-trips, would be a very fun little set-up. I´d have to speak spanish on a daily basis and while the pay is low, I would get to parttake in all the company activities for free, on my days off. I shall keep you posted on how the discussion turns out.

I´ve yet to take pictures of the town and the volcano myself, but I´ve attached some pics I´ve found on the web. Villarica is the second most active volcano in South America. At night, you can see a red glow above the volcano crater from most places in town.

I spent the night hanging out with the hostel-crowd: 5 Chileans, 1 Brit, 3 Ozzies and 2 French-Belgians. In a strange twist, we all communicated with eachother in Spanish instead of English and the conversation got increasingly funny as the weed I´d scored in Santiago got passed around the group. Exsqueeze the blurriness and general low-quality of the pictures. It was very hard to keep a steady hand by that point ;)