Kyle Hepp

December 31, 2007

My life has been total chaos recently. But, I mean that in the best possible way. It’s been nothing but happy shambles and ruckus.

As you already know, we moved into our new apartment a little about two or three weeks ago. We had barely been here a week when my family arrived for their Christmas break. My mom, brother, stepdad, stepbro, and stepsis all came down. Don’t worry, they didn’t all sleep in our one bedroom. My only Chilean friend is amazing, and she got us a ridiculous discount at the Marriott so they stayed at a cuico hotel for flaite prices We didn’t spend much time in Santiago, though. After two days here we rented two cars and headed down to Pucon and Valdivia to do the touristy stuff.

I’d already been to Pucon before but I was looking forward to climbing the volcano again. The first time I went up it, my group was full of little wannabe Speedy Gonzalezes. We made it up in a little over 3 hours…my friend and I huffed and puffed the whole way. The pace wasn’t easy. This time with my family, the guide said he was going to take the slowest person’s pace. We started out going at my stepsister’s pace…then my stepdad started falling behind so we slowed down even more. My mom was lagging too. It got to the point where I didn’t think they would all make it to the top. I was up by my stepsister most of the way and I kept telling her that she had to keep going to SEE RED HOT LAVA! She broke down in tears at one point because she didn’t think she could do it. That’s just how she is, she always completely underestimates herself. After tears and eating chocolate and bananas (gotta have your potassium!) at the first break she pushed through, and once she decided that she was going to do it, she was fine.

On about the second to last hill I thought everybody was going to have a breakdown, even S., my brother and stepbrother. None of them complained very much, but you could just see it in their eyes…they were exhausted. My brother was exhausted because for the first half of the trip up he was running way up above the trail, taking pictures, coming back down to show them to me (he was really excited about using my fancy pants camera), and then running back up again. In total he probably climbed twice the distance as the rest of us. Plus, the I think the mental battle was getting to the group as well. You see, for the last 3 or 4 big hills when people were asking, “Are we there yet?” the guide would say, “Yeah, YEAH! THIS is the last hill!” And it never was. Once you got up one hill there was always another one rising up behind it…and each one looked steeper than the last. I knew the guide would do this because the first time around my other guide had done the same thing and it killed me!

For the final two hills we split up into two groups, a group for the snail paced and a group for the slightly less snail paced. S., my brother, stepbrother and I went in the faster group with one guide while my mom, stepdad and stepsis went in the slower group with the other. Our guide asked how fast we wanted to go and since we all must’ve seemed pretty enthusiastic when we answered he took off sprinting at the word go. Yes, that’s right, SPRINTING UP A VOLCANO.

The guides normally take you up a zig zag path, rather than straight up so you’re not walking up as steep of an incline, but when we signed up for the fast group I guess he thought we were like mini Lance Armstrong’s or something because the guy seriously TOOK OFF straight up the damn volcano. We followed him at that pace for what was probably only 10 minutes (ok, I bet I’m exaggerating, it might have been more like 2 minutes, I don’t know). It felt like an eternity, I thought my heart was going to burst. The guide was leading the way, and I was right behind him, followed by my brother, then S., then my stepbrother. As the guide sprinted, and then gradually slowed to a jog I kept RIGHT on his heels. In a group of boys and also in a family where I’ve always been the weakest (and fattest, least athletic) link I really didn’t want to be a wuss. So I didn’t slow down even though I was pretty much gasping for breath. The guide probably thought I was a asthmatic smoker with one lung or something. He kept shouting, “Estan bien, estan bien???” (Are you guys ok, are you ok??? But, he never looked back to check so I just kept wheezing to him, “Si, si, sigue asi!” (Yes, yes, keep going!) I didn’t look back either. I focused on keeping up with him because I didn’t want to be the one holding the fast group up. Eventually he paused and when we stopped and turned around, I saw my brother was about a minute behind, S. about 5 minutes behind and my stepbrother was even further back than that.

After they all caught up, all of a sudden we heard frantic whistles, tweet, tweet, TWEEEEEEEEEET, TWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!!!!!!! And our guide started shouting, “Out of the way, out of the way NOW, AHORA MISMO!!!!”

There were rocks hurling down the mountain at us. They weren’t huge or anything, but still big enough that one of those to the head could’ve definitely killed a person or possibly knocked someone off the volcano. One stupid tour group had gone up the wrong path and set a whole bunch of big stones loose.

But after that we made it to the summit with no more scary incidents. The only problem when we arrived was that there was no lava. I was SO disappointed, mostly for my family who hadn’t seen the lava before. The last time I did it the volcano was having explosions that reached higher than the edge where we were standing watching. Volcan Villarica is one of the most active volcanoes out there. But this time they said they hadn’t been able to see lava for a few days. The only sign of activity was the thick green smoke (sulfur) coming out of the crater, that made it impossible to breath if you got too close. Of course I got too close. I had to. I needed to get the shot Afterwards I felt like someone had stuck a mini blow torch up my nostrils and scorched them.

The whole trip took about 5.5 hours this time. We were the second to last group to make it up, and I’m pretty sure the last group started way after us But I was still proud of everyone for making it. And I was also really proud of myself because I was the first one of my family to get up there…and after we got down I seriously felt like I could’ve done it all over again.

I think since the first time I did it I struggled so much, this time I was way over prepared mentally. I was expecting my mind to have to battle with my muscles and force them to go on, but the two were in perfect harmony this time. And I think my running up the hill helped too. That stupid hill is actually harder to run up than it is to climb the volcano!

So that was part of my vacation with my family. If anybody knows how to make a continue reading link in blogger tell me and then I’ll post pictures of the volcano but I didn’t want to post them all on the main page because it would take forever to load.