The Blaus - South America and Europe

26 del Febrero - Pucon

Pucon is a town in Chile that has a lake with a black sand beach, natural thermal baths, and an active volcano that you can hike to the top of. Hiking the volcano sounds like it would be extremely challenging, because it is steep and a far distance to the top (8 to 10 hours round trip). The top of the volcano is covered in snow, so you have to wear cramp-ons and use an ice pick to climb to the top in the snow. There are dangerous sulfur gases coming out of the volcano, so you have to wear a gas mask at the top, but you can look into the volcano and see the lava flowing inside. In retrospect, it`s probably best that we didn´t end up going there, but we were excited about it because it sounded like an experience that we might never encounter again.

After we left El Bolson, we split up with Pete and Rachel to go to Pucon while they made their way to Mendoza. We got on a bus to a small town just outside of Pucon (7 hours away by bus) called Junin Del Los Andes. The bus ride from El Bolson to Junin De Los Andes was beautiful. It looked like Canyonland in Utah, with strange formations of rock all around and beautiful silver and green rivers running beside the road. The evening air was cool and the orange light on the mountains and rivers made the surrounding sights very scenic.

We had our first sketchy experience traveling here in Argentina. We admit that we have become very comfortable in Argentina and we have let our guard down quite a bit. We arrived in this little town (Junin De Los Andes) at 9pm without any knowledge of the place and we figured that we could get into a cab and ask the driver to take us to one of the hostels listed in our guidebook. We have done this before and we have never had a problem.

We asked some people on the street for basic directions to one of the hostels and they pointed in one direction and told us it would be about 5 blocks or so. Since we didn`t have a map and it was getting late and dark, we jumped into a cab instead of walking there. The cab driver started driving in the opposite direction and we assumed that the people on the street were wrong about the location of the place.

Then we realized that we were going fairly far away from the center of town on a dirt road and we started asking where we were going. Jen got super nervous and pulled out our mace (we brought mace with us just for these types of situations) and gave it to Billy. The cab driver kept telling us that all the accomodations in town were booked, and he wanted to take us to some places outside of the center that might have rooms. We finally arrived at the hotel he had in mind and it turned out to be a super expensive fly fishing lodge that was booked. The whole time this taxi driver seemed like a really nice guy who was just trying to help us find a place to stay for the night.

So, then we get back into the taxi with him and he starts calling around on his radio and speaking really fast...we couldn´t tell what he was saying. He then tells us that he knows about a "casa particular" that his friend owns that he rents out to travelers. We end up at some guy`s house who asks us if we want to go and look at the place. The guy jumps into the car with us and we head over to this other house to take a look.

At this point, Billy and I just want this whole interaction to end. We agree to stay at this house and they tell us that it costs $100 pesos per night and the taxi ride was $50 pesos. This is ridiculous. The accomodations here cost about half that much and we have never paid more than $10 pesos for a cab ride. We are angry, but we want to get rid of these slimy guys, so we agree and pay them.

The house was so disgusting...it was beyond belief. It would be condemned if it were in the States. Granted, the standard of living here is much different, but this house was not livable. It was falling apart and it was so dirty, and there were bugs and spiders everywhere. The roof must have had serious leaks because all the walls had water damage (we were lucky it wasn`t raining). The bathroom ceiling was horribly moldy. There was a sound of dripping water coming from somewhere other than the bathroom or the kitchen. We actually cooked dinner in the kitchen because we were starving and there were no restaurants open. We wanted to pour bleach all over everything we had to touch in that kitchen. We choked down our meal and went straight to sleep. We didn´t even want to touch the bed in that place, so we slept in our sleeping bags on top of the bed. All night we noticed that there was a dim light shining through the ceiling, but we thought that it was some kind of ambient light from the street lamps outside. Jen had the worst nightmares. Jen woke us both in the middle of the night, because she was kicking someone in the face in her dream and she starting kicking while laying there in her sleep. She was afraid that someone was going to come to the house in the middle of the night and steal our money or something...as if this whole situation was part of an elaborate plan to continue ripping us off.

In the morning when we woke up we noticed that the dim light was coming from the attic and you could actually see parts of the attic through the cracks in the ceiling. We couldn´t tell what was up there, but it freaked us out. There was one door in the house that was locked, which must´ve led up to the attic. As soon as we discovered this, we got out of there at practically a run until we were far enough away to take deep breaths and laugh about the calamity.

We went into town to the hostel that we asked the driver to take us to in the first place the night before and they told us that they had rooms. We felt totally swindled and bamboozled by these two guys. It turned out that we couldn`t even get to Pucon because all the buses were booked for 4 days and we didn´t want to be in that town for one more minute. So, as we were getting onto the bus to get the hell out of that town, we saw the cab driver in his taxi on the street. Jen ran over to him and told him that we knew that he lied to us and asked him why he did it. She was calling him a liar, but tried not to make a scene. She was yelling in Spanglish about how he stole our money, deceived us. All he could say was that he didn´t understand what she was talking about and he hit the gas peddle and sped away. We immediately jumped on the bus and were very happy to be leaving Junin De Los Andes.

Traveling like this has it`s good and bad moments. We are lucky that nothing really bad has happened to us so far. We are reminded to keep our wits about us and always be skeptical of situations and people. The whole transaction only cost us $150 pesos, which is $50. It made us realize that traveling is so much about the people that you encounter...good or bad...they frame the experience that you take away. Unfortunately, our memory of Junin De Los Andes will not be a good one, but we can look back on every other place we`ve been with fond memories.

posted by The Blaus @ 7:47 PM