21/05/2011 (posted 22/05/2011)
I woke up after a great night's sleep - I was lovely and warm and bilssfully alone with a whole dormitory to myself.
I checked out of my hostel but was able to leave my bag there for the day (until I got a bus later) which was nice, and they said I could use internet and stuff free.
Such nice people - sounds stupid but if I come back to Pucon in the future, I will definitely go to this place again as all the staff have been lovely and the facilities are great. That said, the female owner clearly thinks I'm crazy - to be fair, I was wearing brown legwarmers externally this morning, but it was really cold. I also suspect that she thinks I'm crazy because whenever she talks to me and I reply in my broken Spanish, she laughs at something I've said and looks at me with a certain pity.
So I left, and went to find a bicycle to rent. On a side note, I think bicycles are one of the greatest inventions ever. To think that some guy (sorry feminists, but it probably was a man) invented a way, without using fuel or motors, of potentially reaching very high speeds solely by moving your legs up and down is just mind-blowing. I'd take my hat off to him if I was wearing one.
But anyway, I went and got a bike for the day. I only needed it for half a day, but I got one-day's worth for cheaper than my guidebook said.
This should have been the first warning sign.
But I got it, got a map of the route I would be taking and off I went. The route goes up to the 'Ojos del Caburga', some rivers by some mountains which are apparently beautiful.
However, it wasn't long before I realised just how uncomfortable the seat was. It had no sort of padding whatsoever and was really small. I also noticed, more seriously, that the rear wheel was heavily rubbing against the piece of metal nearest to it , and the problem kept getting worse.
So bad, in fact, that it got to the stage where any progress I made with each pedal was instantly nullified by the immense amount of friction produced by the wheel rubbing. I persevered, but the problem was unsustainable so I stopped and started walking back. Luckily I had only reached about 5km so the walk wasn't awful, but I still felt a little short-changed by the bike company.
When I got there, I couldn't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of asking for money back because they wouldn't understand me and would no doubt dig their heels in. I also couldn't ask for another one to return to the route as by this time, I didn't have enough time left before my bus to Temuco.
So I left, annoyed.
The weather took a turn severely for the worse - I was already wearing my legwarmers under my trousers - and started absolutely peeing down with rain, to a ridiculous extent. So I was glad to get on the bus to Temuco and just chill for a bit, although I couldn't do my favourite thing to do on a bus (sleep) as I didn't want to miss my stop.
I got to Temuco, and it was torrentially raining there as well.
Great. I walked round for around fifteen minutes trying to find a taxi, found one with two people already in it and the guy invited me in - this is obviously what they do here. It dropped the other two off and then he turned to me - I showed him Robert's address (I'm staying with Robert and his family again for a couple of days) and he seemed to know where it was, so off we went.
However, on the way I realised I was very low on cash and didn't have enough to pay him so I got him to take me to a cashpoint. I entered my card and tried withdrawing various amounts of money but an 'error' message came up each time. At this stage, I thought I was a little bit screwed.
Luckily, there was another ATM a block away which accepted my card and let me get a little bit of money out - obviously I need to transfer some more into my account.
The next drama was getting to Robert's house. He got to the rough vicinity of the area but didn't know where the precise street was, and when you're dropping someone off this is quite important. So we cruised around for maybe fifteen minutes, scouring around in vain hoping to find the street but it was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually the driver asked someone, drove on, drove back to ask the person again, drove on again and FINALLY I arrived at Robert's house where I was greeted with some beef and rice and a couple of beers.
After that, we all sat by the fire chilling and eating the hazelnuts grown in Robert's plantation and they were unbelievably tasty. I have found a new food that I really like.
I then went to brush my teeth and get an early-ish night as I was tired when Natalie got back to the house with some friends and most importantly, some pisco. So I spat out the toothpaste and went back downstairs for some piscolas and more hazelnuts.
Eventually, I made my excuses and went to bed at around 1:30am.
I was knackered.
JG
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