CHILE has one of the highest number of active volcanoes in the world — about 100. But this doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to see one in action if you visit the country. Yet with 2015 turning out to be a year of natural disasters for the South American country — what with flooding in the Atacama Desert and a severe drought — I was in for some luck.
Little did I know, however, that an eruption would scuttle my travel plans.
I initially set out for the small tourist town of Pucon, 700km south of Santiago, to see the Villarrica volcano in action.
Usually you can hike it in a single day, but that all changed in March when the town’s inhabitants were forced to evacuate briefly when it erupted.
A few weeks later, lava spewed from its dome-shaped crater again. Despite this and the popular hike up the cone being off limits, I was still keen to see a real volcano in action.
As luck would have it, Villarrica sprung to life almost immediately upon my evening arrival in Pucon. The town’s siren went off. My heart raced. But the hipster manager of the hostel in which I was staying shrugged it off, saying three rings meant evacuation. The siren had rung only once, meaning a blaze had broken out nearby, he said.
The smell of wood smoke that hangs in the air in Pucon at night made it difficult to tell whether it was a small house fire or something more serious to worry about — like a lava flow that had set the nearby woods ablaze. After all, the volcano lies barely 15km from the town.
...
THAT night the hostel manager and his cohorts, aided by wine, pored over Google Earth maps, trying to work out what would be wiped out first if the thing finally blew.
The discussion quickly turned to past eruptions, including one of a nearby volcano some decades back during which the ash cloud had reached as far as Concepcion, the country’s second-largest city.
In plain sight of day, the volcano — more than 2,800m high and set amid a kind of alpine Disney World — made for a dramatic setting and it was clear why it attracts so many tourists.
The cone, trailing a thin strip of smoke, was visible from almost every point in the town; a foreboding presence. And at night, a small lava lake at the summit of the crater glowed orange, marked occasionally by lava explosions that reached up to 200m above the crater.
I asked the hipster what the evacuation procedure was. He replied that on hearing that third ring, we had to make for the small peninsula that juts out into Lake Villarrica. "And then what?" I asked. "Then we all hold hands and pray," he joked.
But maybe he was right. Maybe there was a kind of humour in it. After all, two days later nothing had changed and the cone was still trailing a thin line of pale smoke.
The joke, however, was on us. It was on a Wednesday afternoon, while returning from a trip to the nearby Pozones hot springs, that the news broke. One of my fellow passengers showed a picture on his cellphone of a column of ash heaving from the Calbuco volcano.
After all the anticipation, Villarrica had been pipped to the post by an unsuspecting candidate — a volcano that had lain dormant for 42 years.
Our first thoughts turned to safety. We were fine, we sighed. All this was happening almost 200km south of Pucon.
But apparently not. The next morning we woke to find the entire town in complete darkness and coated in a layer of thick (and still falling) ash. The border had been closed and the Argentinian towns of San Martin and Bariloche were heaped in ash, scuttling my plans to travel the lake regions.
Following a snap decision I took the first bus I could and headed north. I was joined by others who had also had their plans thwarted. All of us were trying to figure out what to do next.
After the ash clouds finally parted, our constant companion going north was the Andes.
In the bus, a cellphone app projected that the ash cloud would arrive in just a day or so in Santiago — exactly where I was heading.
With word out that the authorities had started handing out masks in Pucon, I continued heading north, to the copper town of Calama, passing the devastation of the recent floods.
...
JUST past Copiapo, the destruction was most visible in the town of Chanaral. Swathes of earth had been ripped from where the highway had once crossed the river. Cars lay like squashed coke cans and homes were caved in. Streets and walls were coated in mud. Nature truly had unleashed its fury on Chile.
I soon reached San Pedro de Atacama. Even there, in the thin air more than 2,400m above sea level, lurks a live volcano — Lascar. In the freezing morning, as the sun pushed up from the desert floor, I could see a thin trail of smoke hanging over its three cones.
It’s one of several volcanos that line the border with Bolivia, and while it last rumbled in 2012, the country’s volcano monitors still watch it closely.
After a few days in the driest region in the world, I opted to return south, to the island of Chiloe, 1,000km south of Santiago. On a Thursday (a week after the eruption), as the bus passed Puerto Varias, Calbuco’s cone slipped into view. Smoke was still pouring out.
As fate would have it, when I arrived at my hostel around midday, the volcano erupted for a third time in just over a week.
But the ash cloud drifted to the southeast and away from the island where, shrouded in mist almost daily, life went on as if the eruption was something happening half a world away; something it seemed was for others to worry about.
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The Villarrica volcano puffs away in the distance across the lake at Pucon. Picture: STEPHEN TIMM
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A house near the town of Chanaral lies in ruin after the northern parts of Chile were hit by fatal floods in March. At least 25 people were reported killed and about 105 homes destroyed. Picture: REUTERS
CHILE has one of the highest number of active volcanoes in the world — about 100. But this doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to see one in action if you visit the country. Yet with 2015 turning out to be a year of natural disasters for the South American country — what with flooding in the Atacama Desert and a severe drought — I was in for some luck.
Little did I know, however, that an eruption would scuttle my travel plans.
I initially set out for the small tourist town of Pucon, 700km south of Santiago, to see the Villarrica volcano in action.
Usually you can hike it in a single day, but that all changed in March when the town’s inhabitants were forced to evacuate briefly when it erupted.
A few weeks later, lava spewed from its dome-shaped crater again. Despite this and the popular hike up the cone being off limits, I was still keen to see a real volcano in action.
As luck would have it, Villarrica sprung to life almost immediately upon my evening arrival in Pucon. The town’s siren went off. My heart raced. But the hipster manager of the hostel in which I was staying shrugged it off, saying three rings meant evacuation. The siren had rung only once, meaning a blaze had broken out nearby, he said.
The smell of wood smoke that hangs in the air in Pucon at night made it difficult to tell whether it was a small house fire or something more serious to worry about — like a lava flow that had set the nearby woods ablaze. After all, the volcano lies barely 15km from the town.
...
THAT night the hostel manager and his cohorts, aided by wine, pored over Google Earth maps, trying to work out what would be wiped out first if the thing finally blew.
The discussion quickly turned to past eruptions, including one of a nearby volcano some decades back during which the ash cloud had reached as far as Concepcion, the country’s second-largest city.
In plain sight of day, the volcano — more than 2,800m high and set amid a kind of alpine Disney World — made for a dramatic setting and it was clear why it attracts so many tourists.
The cone, trailing a thin strip of smoke, was visible from almost every point in the town; a foreboding presence. And at night, a small lava lake at the summit of the crater glowed orange, marked occasionally by lava explosions that reached up to 200m above the crater.
I asked the hipster what the evacuation procedure was. He replied that on hearing that third ring, we had to make for the small peninsula that juts out into Lake Villarrica. "And then what?" I asked. "Then we all hold hands and pray," he joked.
But maybe he was right. Maybe there was a kind of humour in it. After all, two days later nothing had changed and the cone was still trailing a thin line of pale smoke.
The joke, however, was on us. It was on a Wednesday afternoon, while returning from a trip to the nearby Pozones hot springs, that the news broke. One of my fellow passengers showed a picture on his cellphone of a column of ash heaving from the Calbuco volcano.
After all the anticipation, Villarrica had been pipped to the post by an unsuspecting candidate — a volcano that had lain dormant for 42 years.
Our first thoughts turned to safety. We were fine, we sighed. All this was happening almost 200km south of Pucon.
But apparently not. The next morning we woke to find the entire town in complete darkness and coated in a layer of thick (and still falling) ash. The border had been closed and the Argentinian towns of San Martin and Bariloche were heaped in ash, scuttling my plans to travel the lake regions.
Following a snap decision I took the first bus I could and headed north. I was joined by others who had also had their plans thwarted. All of us were trying to figure out what to do next.
After the ash clouds finally parted, our constant companion going north was the Andes.
In the bus, a cellphone app projected that the ash cloud would arrive in just a day or so in Santiago — exactly where I was heading.
With word out that the authorities had started handing out masks in Pucon, I continued heading north, to the copper town of Calama, passing the devastation of the recent floods.
...
JUST past Copiapo, the destruction was most visible in the town of Chanaral. Swathes of earth had been ripped from where the highway had once crossed the river. Cars lay like squashed coke cans and homes were caved in. Streets and walls were coated in mud. Nature truly had unleashed its fury on Chile.
I soon reached San Pedro de Atacama. Even there, in the thin air more than 2,400m above sea level, lurks a live volcano — Lascar. In the freezing morning, as the sun pushed up from the desert floor, I could see a thin trail of smoke hanging over its three cones.
It’s one of several volcanos that line the border with Bolivia, and while it last rumbled in 2012, the country’s volcano monitors still watch it closely.
After a few days in the driest region in the world, I opted to return south, to the island of Chiloe, 1,000km south of Santiago. On a Thursday (a week after the eruption), as the bus passed Puerto Varias, Calbuco’s cone slipped into view. Smoke was still pouring out.
As fate would have it, when I arrived at my hostel around midday, the volcano erupted for a third time in just over a week.
But the ash cloud drifted to the southeast and away from the island where, shrouded in mist almost daily, life went on as if the eruption was something happening half a world away; something it seemed was for others to worry about.
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