Buck Neked

Pucon, Chile

We get up fairly early to make the beautiful drive up to Pucon. The beginning of day is the usually stunning 7 lakes drive,
Photographic evidence!

where we make several stops to take photos of waterfalls and lakes that are surrounded by craggy, glacier-clad peaks. Unfortunately, today it’s a bit cloudy, which puts a bit of a damper on it all. Also, I think the fact that all we’ve seen for the past couple of weeks or so have been beautiful glacier-clad peaks and spectacular lakes, puts our threshold for being impressed a bit high.

We do stop for lunch near a bridge that you can jump off of into turquoise blue, very, very cold water. You can see the glacier that it comes from. On my first tour, Dave, my first driver and I, pioneered this bridge jump and we’ve been stopping here ever since. Because of the weather and the fact that I’ve already made the jump a couple of times, I just can’t be assed to do it again. But that doesn’t stop Neal. It just so happens that it’s his birthday so he decides to jump in his birthday suit. He’s not shy, that boy. He just stripped down and jumped in. I’m not sure that I would have the… let’s call it testicular fortitude to jump into water that cold, neked, in front of that many people, most of whom were holding cameras that have the video function on them. Memorable birthday nonetheless.

We continue northwest until we get to the Chilean border. I hate Chilean borders. They’re always so nit-picky about everything. I always ask everybody to throw away any fruit, vegetable or meat products before we get to the border, but people always forget one thing or another. This time they board the truck, always with me keeping an eye on them, and they find some eggs. Usually, if they find “contraband” like this, they just throw it away. This time, however, this guy decides to line everybody up and ask them whose they are. Damon, for reasons I can’t explain, raises his hand and says, “Oh yeah, I think they’re ours.” So then he actually pulls Damon, with me right behind of course, into his office and starts to write him up some sort of ticket (really I think that he was looking for a bribe). Luckily, Damon happens to mention in passing that they’re hardboiled eggs. I grab one of the eggs and break it open in front of the official. Haha, hardboiled eggs are legal. The official lets us go a bit dejectedly.

We finally pull into the Pucon campsite just before it starts to get dark. Pucon is a little town set next to an attractive lake named Lake Villarica and in the shadow of a volcano of the same name. Mt. Villarica is a perfect snow cone volcano, that still looks a bit ominous because of its vicinity to the town and the fact that it constantly has a bit of smoke spewing out the top.

I have a lot to do before dinner. I run around doing shopping with the cook team, as well as set up our volcano climb for the next day. Everybody but Alison has signed up for the day long tour for the next day. I have never had the time to do it, so I’m really looking forward to the tour. Just as dinner’s almost ready, I realize that I haven’t bought a cake for Neal’s birthday, so I rush off to do that and get back just in time as dinner’s ending. There happens to be a cherry in the middle of the cake and so I tell Neal that it’s Chilean tradition for the birthday boy to eat the cherry off the cake with no hands…and then as he’s doing it I push his face into the cake. Classic jokes never get old. I do end up getting a lot of grief from Claire, however, who was apparently really wanted to have some cake.