Pucon and El Huerquehue National Park (2nd to 7th January)

Long bus journey south on Interbus (12 hours) to Pucon, arriving in beautiful sunshine and greeted by a snow capped volcano in the distance. Pucon's a nice, very touristy sort of alpine come lake district town, a sort of Chilean Keswick (hope that's not an insult!). Visited the thermas (hot springs) a short drive away from town, and replenished the stores for the expedition to a nearby national park.

Off to explore Parque Nacional El Huerquehue for three days, backpacking again, but this time with our tent in tow as well. The park is made up of stunning and rather bizarre looking Monkey Puzzle trees with an understory of berberis bushes, some sort of giant English country garden mixed with council amenity planting. The first day isn't such good weather, but the rain keeps off, so trekking up the 650 metres to the top of the pass is not too bad with the pack. This time I'm testing the nordic speed walking method with the walking poles that everyone who walks in the countryside seems to consider essential equipment these days (OK, I'm making use of fallen canes from the bamboo forest, but it's the same idea). Yes – it's easier walking, especially up hill! I'm still convinces these things contribute to higher levels of erosion though – look at the sides of any path and they're all broken up by these poles.

Camping at a site called Renahue tonight, after a long day of tramping. Back to the good old camping food, but this time testing our new stove we bought in New Zealand which works very well. Woke up to heavy rain... weather pretty much has clamped down on us, so we decide it's better to make camp here a second. After much affort in the rain, managed to get a fire going, but with all the wet fuel around, it was never going to be roaring. Woke up with frost on the tent in the morning after a freezing night in our summer sleeping bags!

Beautiful hot, sunny day for the trek back, and stunning scenery through the forest and down the valleys. A bit of a sprint to meet the earlier bus at 5pm to get back in time for a fabulous veggie Thai green curry and to prepare for our bus trip to Puerto Varas on JAC in the morning. All is well, but feeling a little rushed with the itinerary.

Puerto Varas seems a very nice small town, though we're just passing through for the night, having a quick service stop. In the small hostel met a tour group who were travelling in one of these “expedition” vehicles and lead by one of the most patronising leaders you could imagine (they would join us on the Navimag ferry, and later as we got to know some of the group members, some would have like to have thrown her overboard..).

See some more pictures here.