Day 45 - These springs ain't so hot after all

Pucon

M's volcano trek came with a free excursion to Termal Metehue, some hot springs 45 minutes or so out of town. We decided that would be a nice relaxing way to spend the day, so we caught the minibus to the springs at 11am.

Unfortunately it wasn't quite what we expected, we had pictured outdoor pools with volcanic springs in beautiful surroundings. However it was a set of three indoor, not too clean, but nicely heated (at probably the optimum temperature for microorganism growth) in a building with no heating!

As this was mainly free (just had to pay K's entry fee) this wouldn't normally have mattered, except the return trip didn't leave until 4:30pm! As the air temperature was cool we couldn't just lounge around in our bathers in between dips, meaning we didn't spend too much time in the pools. The place did have a nice restaurant though, so we had a leisurely lunch, took a walk around the grounds, and finished up outside doing a spot of reading. After all that it wasn't such a bad day, just a little slow.

There has to be a reason why no-one is in that "hot spring"

The weather had turned today and the wonderful clear view that you could see of the volcano all day yesterday was gone, in fact there was no volcano to be seen at all. We spoke to "our" guy at the tour agency, he told us that the volcano climb was closed today due to 100kmh winds, and that they expected a dump of about 25cm of snow tonight, meaning it would also be closed tomorrow as the snow would have turned to ice, making it too dangerous. M was lucky to get the climb in yesterday - almost the last chance for the season.

One thing we noticed about this small town is that it has more than the usual number of large supermarkets - catering for the holiday crowds we suppose. One of the great things about the supermarkets in Chile has been that some of them cook their bread fresh on site, with bread being baked and put out for sale all day, you can still get nice hot bread at 7pm .... M especially likes the maraqueta - yum!