At the moment I am sitting on the waterfront by lake Villarrica, it has the most breathtakingly beautiful of views. To the north you have vast wooded hills, to the west you have the hilly town of Villarrica, to the south there are more vast wooded hills and to the east you have Pucon. Behind Pucon is volcano Villarrica, it is a tall 2840m high and is snow capped with a small plume of smoke steadily rising from the peak. In winter time this area becomes a very popular ski resort as there are a few big volcanoes and plenty of places for hiking. The houses are all in chalet form and made of wood. It is very hard to differentiate here from for example a village in the Alps, apart from the fact that everything is in Spanish and its absolutely boiling at around 30°C.
I am sitting down writing, drinking my litre bottle of Brahma Extra, which is a darker and stronger version of the Brazilian lager at 5.5% volume, it doesn't taste too bad either but could definitely do with being a lot colder.
I have given up trying to contact Sam, his phone number or at least the number he gave me isn't working at all, its saying that it isn't recognised. If he doesn't respond to my emails I will completely give up and leave to go to Valpraiso, my next port of call after here.
For most of the morning I sat at my laptop at the hostel and searched the web. An amusing thing just happened, some young kid tried to throw a bag over a little stream by the lake and the bag fell in, he said it was okay because the bag only contained a pair of shoes. He is gradually losing his balance and looks as if he is going to fall in any minute, and he's in, only his feet fell in but still the stupid idiot couldn't throw a bag across a metre and a half stream and then lost his balance and fell in.
Whilst I was bored and a little stressed at the hostel this morning I decided to look into possible places to go travelling to. I even managed to compile a list and a rough plan including rough prices of how I was to get to where and when. My next major stop is going to be Valpraiso, hopefully I can get a lift most of the way if not the bus will cost around $2400 pesos which isn't too much, around £30. I plan to stay there at least a few days in order to check out the city and go to a couple of vineyards in the time. The rough route I am planning to take will give me a few days in Valpraiso then onto Santiago and actually stay there for a few nights or so in the city centre a bit, taking in the sights and hopefully checking out the night life. I have been told about a grimey bare that serves a drink called 'Terramoto' which translates to earthquake, sounds good and strong and all I've heard about it is that it gets you very drunk indeed. In Santiago I'm hoping to get in contact with Sam and for him to show me around the city a bit. From Santiago I am planning to go across the Andes by bus into Mendoza, Argentina and check out the Argentinian wine country. I'll stay there a few days then maybe a couple of days in Cordoba and do the same. Then I'm going to get the bus across Argentina to its capital Buenos Aires, I plan to stay there at least a few days maybe more.
I have just spotted some more snow capped volcanoes over to the north of the lake, don't quite know what they are or how I managed to miss them before. They look quite a lot further away than Volcano Villarrica though. I can imagine this place looking very impressive during winter, when it snows and all the volcanoes and hills and forests and houses are completely covered with snow. It would look like a totally different place but equally as impressive as it is now with the sun shining and the lake glistening like thousands of sparkling diamonds.