pucon redux

I am not sure I need to return to Pucon. Sure, it was sunny and 85 and birds were chirping, but it wasn´t an easy task encountering these few pleasant subjects to take photos of amidst the hoards of tourists. A little vocabulary lesson: "cuico" refers to rich people; Pucon´s nickname is "Cuicon". During the summer months of January and February, people from Santiago swarm the town and its nearby beaches. A fair amount of foreigners also use Pucon as a hub for adventure sports. My coworker, Marcela, and I were there to work at a four-day wool crafts fair. Our schedule was noon to midnight for four days straight. The schedule of the majority of vacationers was more like wake up at noon and go out to the clubs at midnight. Marcela and I checked into a hostel on a peaceful dirt road away from the action, but when we came back at 1am after working all day, we had to dodge the taxis whizzing by and dropping people off at the discotheque that we discovered in the lot next to the hostel. At 3am, the two 16-year old girls who were rooming with us came back to the hostel, turned on the lights with no regard, and were talking loudly. Although I was annoyed to be woken up, the lights revealed bedbugs that were crawling on the walls and in our beds. We made the hostel management change our mattresses and bedding and they fumigated the next day, but needless to say, we didn´t sleep well for the rest of our time there. Not to mention the disco sounds thumping until the roosters started crowing at dawn. Not unlike my return from my first visit to Pucon (remember New Year´s eve?), I was relieved to come back to Temuco and pass out in my dark and tiny room that smells like wet dogs.