The Aspen of Chile

I am now in Pucon. It is very resort-y but cute. It is on Lago (lake) Villarrica. Chileans come here in the summer and there are lots of cabins and summer homes. Tons of tourists come here too because there is skiing here in the winter and trekking on the giant snow covered Volcan Villarrica. There are tons of guiding companies for rafting and trekking around the area. I´m here during the shoulder season. It is starting to warm up but there is still a serious nip in the air and not yet too many people. It is fairly pricey, especially for South American standards. My hostel is the cool eco vegetarian coop-run deal called Ecole! (the exclamation is part of the name, I´m not that fired up about it.. yet) I´m signed up for Spanish lessons starting Monday.
The train ride here was interesting. Everything was fine and I´m safe and sound, but there was a little scare. Not sure why I´m telling people this because worrying is so not necessary... Anyway the train came to a weird skidding stop about an hour into the trip. Turns out there was some lumber on the tracks...? I´m still not sure because the work that they did to get us moving again (only about 45 minuts later) was under my car which was the third one. The scary part was that the lumber turned up a bunch of dirt and dust which came into the car through the vents. At first I thought it was smoke until it actually had a texture to it. I was starting to freak out and get my backpack on. Luckily a nice guy behind me spoke English and filled me in on what was happening. Unfortunately his English also served to scare me for no reason. Example: I look out the window and it is pitch black so I freak out and ask him if we are in a tunnel. He says yes. The panic rises until I walk around and see lights from another window. Turns out he just says yes to most of my questions whether he understands them or not. It was pretty funny because people literally kept sleeping during this entire ordeal. There was a group of 10 year old girls that chatted with me early on and I figured their parents would keep them safe so I tried to follow their lead. They proceeded to sing Chilean children´s songs while their dad went outside the car to check things out. I went out too. It was the railroad guys, some male passengers and the gringo girl who was about to go through the emergency exit :) My services were not needed so I went back to my seat and read.
The girls were so cute. I tried to speak Spanish and they tried to speak English. One of them asked me how we say the name of the town Temuco in English. I told her that we didn´t have our own word for their town. Her friends thought it was hilarious.
Anyway, the bus ride from Temuco was much less exciting. Probably no more trains for me :) I did manage to get some sleep after the brief hold up. The real bummer about yesterday was leaving my sunglasses at the hostel... ugh!
Thanks for all of the comments on the blog. Hey, who is my landlord - Tim or John? I am not sure what to say when people ask where I am from due to my homeless status. I say California since that goes over better than Estados Unidos and I´d have nothing to say if people asked me about Seattle.
The views here are awesome - I´m off to take them in.