Pucon

Hostels should exist everywhere ... This place is beautiful. the first thing that struck me was the smell -- it smells like Maya´s house. The open windows, the wood burning stove that warms the common area, and the natural wood walls that gently welcome me into their spaces. It is rainy today and cold, although this is not a bad thing. We have been pretty sedate, as we recover from the 12 hour bus ride it to get to here. We went for a walk around the town -- which reminds me of Crested Butte in colorado, because it is a small, cozy town that you can walk a circle around in probably about an hour, but along the main street are dozens of tourist operaters to take you to the volcano, or zip lining through the canopy, or rafting, or kayaking, or wind surfing, or camping, or to the thermal baths..... everything. it´s an awesome place, although i realize that i could easily spend too much money here. I´ve been haning out in the common area with a couple of brittish girls and some australian guys, although i mostly just listen to their conversation that seems to come from a completely different world. all these pop culture icons and movies and tv shows that i don´t watch... Gustavo is one of the hombres that works here, and he is a lot of fun to talk to. He welcomed us in when we arrived a solid 2 hours before check in time and offered us tea. He is a talker and a joker. He came here from Uruguay when he was traveling a year ago, stayed at this hostel for a while, then when he came back through about month ago he decided to stay here so now he´s working here for a while. it sounds like a fantastic life to me.
it´s pretty overwhelming to be in this place where we have no idea what we´re doing, much less how long we´re going to be here. in some ways a month seems very short, but in others it seems very very long, and i really can´t imagine what i will be doing every day for the next 23 days. Besides the fact that we have reservations here for the next two nights and that we want to end up in Chiloe in about 2 weeks, the only other thing I know is that God is with me and that He is good. This is what one might call an excercize of faith.

Anyhow, I don´t want to spend too much time on here. We´ll hopefully be heading out again soon to brave the rain to soak in some hot springs up by the mountains. Ay, de verdad me encanta este pais.