Best Day Ever!

Today Nicole and I had one of the best days we've had here in Chile. 

Our professors were feeling a little guilty that they haven't been taking us to places in Chile, so today they took us out. It kind of felt like a "play date"- like Dr. Jara and Dr. Nunez got together were like: Hey we both have a PIRE project students, you know what we should do is take them on a trip, wouldn't that be fun? 

It was fun. 

First the day started off rainy, and not looking good. We drove east towards the Andes for a few hours and arrived at the Eureka volcano. It was poring rain, but the park ranger said that there were still tours of the volcano's cave. Me, being a sucker for caves asked if we could go on the tour. From the moment I got out of the car I was drenched from my knees down, since that is where the oversized jacket I borrowed stopped. We rushed into this cabin and stayed by the fire until everyone for the tour was there. Then we put on some hard hats and made a run for the cave.

The tour started off with the park ranger explaining how volcanos are formed and specifics about the Eureka volcano. It was all in spanish, but Dr. Jara translated for us. Then we went into the cave. 

Caves=Cool so I don't know what else to say. I think the pictures say enough for themselves. Basically this cave was AWESOME!!!! And it's actually the only tour-able lava cave in South America!

After the cave (it was still raining), we went into Pucon and had lunch. Pucon is a fancy tourist town for the rich. Dr. Jara says that anyone who is anyone goes to Pucon, so that makes Nicole and me pretty cool too right? In Pucon we had a really good lunch at this really fancy place. The meal cost about $70,000 pesos, which is $121 US dollars. Thank goodness PIRE paid, which really means the US government paid. 

After lunch we went to the "hot springs." Nicole and I have been to the hot springs in Utah, and so we thought these would be similar. In Utah you just drive up in your car, pop out and get into the hot spring. That's not what we did.... Dr. Jara took us to a SPA! 

There was a pool with water pumped in from a hot spring, but it was most defiantly a spa. A very nice spa. We were way surprised, but welcomed the nice warm water. It seemed like Dr. Jara really was enjoying the spa. Nicole hypothesized that we were probably just his excuse to come to the spa, and I would have to agree. 

While at the spa everyone was wearing little blue caps. Being "too cool" for the caps we just went into the water without them. However we were busted by the "cap police" who asked us to go put them on.

After the hot springs we had some coke. During our drink the lights went out though because of the rain storm and we had a candle light drink. I always imagined Nicole and I would have a candle light scene  of some kind since we have basically done everything else together for the last three months. 

Then we took the three hour drive home. It was just another great day in Chile.