Hot Springs in Chile (which I guess is the exact opposite of my past post about Chile)

So as we had one more day to kill in Bariloche before we took a bus up to Mendoza we took some advice and headed to Chile (yet again) to go to Puyehue National Park which is semi-famous for three things: Volcanos, Hot Springs, and a 4 day long trek.  Well we decided to do the first two and because we recently finished a long trek we decided not to do the trek here.  As we only had basically a day we took a morning bus from Bariloche to the National Park, unfortunatley the bus didn´t stop at the place we wanted it to and we went an extra hour all the way to the city of Osorno, Chile.  We weren´t too impressed by Osorno (it is not really a tourist hub), but in the end it was good the hour or so we spent in the town because it allowed us to go grocery shopping at a supermarket in town (Chile has really strict rules about bringing in any fresh food products like veggies, fruit, dairy, and meat).  We hoped on a local bus which was pretty cheap and took the hour ride back out to Aguas Calientes (which literally means Hot Waters), which is the small  (and cheaper of three) spa in the national park.  Additionally this drive was pretty nice because we got to see several volcanos in the area which we probably wouldn´t have gotten to see otherwise (unfortunatley we don´t really have any pictures of the volcanos because we were in a bus).

When we arrived at the park there was basically three things at the entrance: the welcome center, the spa, and a refugio (look at the post about Torres del Paine if you want a better explanation of what a refugio is).  We looked at a park map and saw that there was a small camp grounds a few minutes up the road.  So we headed there, when we got there the place was completely empty and even though there was an office area it was completely closed and no one was around.  So even though there was a Park Rangers Station a few minutes away we just decided to setup camp and see what happened.  In the end we pretty much squated for the night. There were no other tents setup and no one ever came to see if any one was camping (12,000 Chilean Pasos saved=$24US).  We kind of assumed because it was not during the high season and a weekday they just did not care.    So after setting up camp we did a short hike up to a view point which allowed us to see the general area we were camping and the Puyehue Valcano.  We then returned back to the campsite and headed straight to the hot springs.  Since it was later in the day the outdoor hot spring was closing (it was cheaper) so we headed to the indoor spring and spent a relaxing 90 minutes just sitting in the hot pools.  The indoor spring was just a large swimming pool that had water from the springs pumped in to it.  We were pleasently surprised though that the water did not smell like ´egg water´ and basically had no odor at all which was different from both hot springs I have been to in Israel and Emily had been to in Montana.  Overall and I quote Emily, ¨We enjoyed them very much!¨

View from the overlook

 View of Volcano Puyehue from the overlook

The next morning we woke up around 6am to the sound of rain.  We soon realized we were camping in a large puddle.  When we finally garnered enough stregnth to wake up basically everything that was on the floor was wet including our sleeping pads, sleeping bags, tent bottom, and our hiking packs which were outside.  Basically we quickly packed up nthrowing everything which was wet into my pack and everything which somehow stayed dried into Emily´s pack.  We then headed to get a bus back to the main highway (where the bus was suppose to drop us off the day before) so we could get a bus back to Bariloche.  The bus finally showed up a bit late and we headed back to Argentina.  One funny thing that happened was when we were going through Argentinian Passport Control, a drug sniffing dog took a liking to my bag.  I assume he just smelt something funky from all the wet stuff packed in to it.  When the Border Patrol Guard pulled my bag out of the bus to search through it I just wanted to tell him he really didn´t want to open it (but I decided that would look suspicious).  So in the end I just felt bad for the poor guy while he went through my entire soaking wet pack.

In the end we arrived back in Bariloche with about 2 hours to spare before our bus to Mendoza.  So we basically retied some soaking wet plastic bags and allowed some of our stuff to dry.  Fortunatley when we arrived in Mendoza (20 hours later) we were able to dry everything out without anything getting moldy!