As The World Turns

Yohan returns to South America, haww yeah!  And how the tides they swell and shift and the opportunities they ebb and flow. My sweet and most wonderful girlfriend has decided to join me and we couldn´t be the happier.  Three weeks ago we flew into Santiago, Chile, and have since been traveling southbound.  In Santiago we went to the local zoo and saw all the cheerful animals in lock down, other than that we spent some time reading in the local parks and catching a few beers in the dodgy bars around town.



From Santiago we traveled to a beautiful, little town called Pucon.  Surrounded to the north and east by a neon-blue lake and peppered with black and white beaches, this place quickly lulled us into a state of relaxation that was hard to wake-up from.   Pucon sits in a gorgeous, green valley surrounded by rolling hills and craggy outcrops of volcanic rock.  Villarrica, the white, dome-capped volcano, sits silently in the background of town, quietly huffing clouds of gray toxic smoke into the air, serving as a reminder to the people that it is only sleeping.  As we arrived into town on an early morning bus, a man approached us and asked if we were looking for a hostal.  I think the first words out of his mouth were: What´s cracking homey G´s, this of course gave us a little laugh and before we knew it, we were in his car driving to his little Cabana just 10 min from town. Lalo´s little cabin was just right for us and it is here that we met our favorite person of the trip thus far: Trucha Man!

Trucha Man, as we called him, and soon after Lalo would too, is a great and loving man in his early thirties from Switzerland.  The first morning we arrived in Pucon, he offered us cheese and bread and then let us tag along with him for the day.  Trucha Man is Trucha Man because this guy has a love and passion for fishing that is so epitomic that it is truly beautiful.  Trucha Man travels all around the world with his fly-rod and not a day goes by when he doesn´t think about fishing.  Not only does he really love the act of fishing but he knows all there is to know about trout and in particular salmon.  Little did I know that salmon were not indigenous to South America but were actually imported from Sweden, just as all the eucalyptus trees here are not indigenous either but are originally from Australia. 

In Pucon we took part in a number of activities, we went rafting one afternoon down some rather serious rapids and got to do some cliff jumping into the river as well. We went para-sailing on another afternoon during a gorgeous, clear day, and had the opportunity to see the landscape all around us from about 2000 ft. up. On the second to last day we climbed Villarrica, which while the climb itself was really quite a joke, it was stunning nonetheless. The grandeur of the view from the summit was awe-inspiring and marvelous, however, the smoke around us was thick and toxic, burning the eyes and making for a deep cough.

Welp, Onward and Offward, we´ll be checking back soon!