After all the activities in the last days (kayaking, mountain biking, volcano climbing) I wasn’t up for more action today and decided to have a relaxing day instead. It started with a sleep in and a nice breakfast. Then I went to the bank which according to the owner of the hostel I’m staying in has the best exchange rate. Jurie had given me some of her USD to change since she is taking a private lesson in horseback riding today and therefore has no time to go to the bank. Unfortunately I didn’t have my passport with me since it’s stored in the safe of the truck. Therefore, the bank refused to change my and Juries money and I needed to go to a foreign exchange with a less favorable rate instead. There I only changed a bit of my money to pay my hostel bill and kept the rest for an exchange in Santiago where we will be going tomorrow. The foreign exchange gave me a shitty rate of 550 Pesos for one Euro. The current rate I looked up in the internet is 635 Pesos and the last time I changed I got a rate of 625 Pesos. So with a change of 100 EUR I lost 12 EUR just because of the bad exchange rate. The exchange rate for USD was with 450 Pesos (internet rate is 480) slightly better so I should have changed USD instead of EUR.

At 11am I left for the Huife Spa & Thermal Bath a bit outside of Pucón. I have booked the transport and entry fee, a total of 18,000 Pesos (40 USD) with the same adventure tour provider we did yesterday’s climb with. I was picked up by a van belonging to the Spa and afterwards it picked up a couple of more people. The drive took us approx. 45min and once we arrived we had six hours’ time to soak our limbs in the hot water of the thermal bath.

There were three pools containing water of different temperatures from lukewarm to hot and very hot. In the very hot one I couldn’t stay longer than 3-4min and when coming out of the water I was red like a crab. So I spend some time in the medium temperature one where I could stay approx. 10min in the water before it got too hot. For cooling down you had the possibility to jump into a river with ice-cold water. The rest of the time I spent lying in my bikini at the pool which felt great after the cold and windy weather of the last days. The air was still a bit chilly, especially when being in the shadow, but I desperately needed the feeling of sunshine on my skin. I really much enjoyed this lazy and relaxing day. It felt a bit like a vacation from the vacation.

I was back in Pucón around 6:30pm and there wasn’t going on much. Pucón is really a small sleepy town and so I just chilled a bit at the terrace of my hostel where you have a wonderful view on the town and the Villarrica Volcano in the background.