Exploring Pucon

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WELL GOOD morning from beautiful Pucon. It's a very nice day today with the spectacular Mount Villarrica standing 2800 metres high snow-capped and more steam coming out of it. It is constantly active. I'm just out here by the lake again under Mount Villarrica. It is very peaceful at this time of year with most of the tourists gone. It's right at the end of the season now and it's a beautiful day actually. It's 9 degrees and very cold, but it's meant to get up to 26 degrees today. That's the warmest I've experienced in quite a long time since I was last in Santiago. So, it's nice getting into the warmer climate again. Just on a walk here and the views are beautiful from all directions.

If you go out another 100 kilometres, you'll reach the coast. We won't be able to get there but it's quite a significant area. It marks the epicentre of the massive 1960 9.5 earthquake, the biggest earthquake ever recorded. It was just off the coast from there. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of any earthquake damage here these days, but it's just a reminder that this area through the beautiful Andes is part of the ring of fire and massive earthquakes do happen and eruptions as well, but this is obviously just a small continuous one. That is probably a good thing because it is not building up pressure inside the mountain which does happen.

When pressure does build up inside a mountain that's when they sort of blow up so I'm guessing this volcano is fairly safe. They have located this town a fair distance from the volcano because there was an earlier settlement at some stage a bit further up the valley. That got affected by some eruption a couple of hundred years ago. Anyway, today I'm just relaxing in town. This is my final day in Patagonia before we head up to Santiago tomorrow. So, we're just all relaxing today and I'm just going to be exploring the lakes so I'll probably have a few more updates as I find scenic areas around the lake, and probably another one at sunset. But this is a really beautiful area, really quiet, so I'm going to be relaxing.

Well as my final afternoon in Patagonia draws to a close, I've just come to the end of town and have just discovered this amazing beach with some of the guide. There's been a dog following us. It actually smells like the sea, but this is a freshwater lake, the same as was over on the other side (this morning) exploring the last couple of days. This is a very beautiful beach this one. Got some volcanic grey sand on it from the mountain, and a spectacular backdrop of the Andean mountains. The sun will be setting fairly soon. The sun's actually quite strong at the moment, probably around 26 degrees. It's a very nice pleasant change from the very cold weather we've been having. But overall, we've had a spectacularly good run of weather this trip, even through Antarctica and all up through Patagonia. I'm just going to walk along the beach and enjoy it for a while. There's virtually no swell at all and such pleasant conditions here.

This little doggy has been following me around all day. It has actually followed me around for my sunrise shoot and followed me around for my late morning shoot, and I met it over at the other beach and it's been following us ever since. I think this dog has adopted me. Perhaps I should tell him I'm disappearing tomorrow.