Wasting Time

Since the last post, I have not left Santiago since yesterday. I have graduated, started a new job (or 4), moved into a new house, met lots of new people, spent most of my days solely in Spanish, and grown in love with produce. This post will be mainly just pictures as I have taken a surprising ton of good ones, but the theme is only my life in Santiago and a little tiny bit in Valpo.

There was now on the Andes when I first arrived here. It was not until this last week that the snow returned finally to the mountains. From Los Dominicos I could see the snow capped Andes (none of the pictures turned out) while sitting under a palm tree.

This picture is of interest because I have spent the last 9 months ranting about how one time this stupid drunk man kicked my soccer ball into a tree. I came back in June only to find that my soccer balls still remains wedged into the tree. If you look in the center of the picture you can see that I have forever made my mark on Los Dominicos.

I have to always be careful. From the picture below, you can see the little white glow of the Virgin Mary. She is always watching... always judging.

While Valpo is not Santiago, it is close enough that you can count it. Winter time Valpo is colder and almost without tourism, but wonderful none the less.

Second Semester Santiago

Cuando la mas bonita mujer en todo el mundo vino a Sudamerica

The most beautiful woman I know, my mother, came and visited me in South America for 10 days. Together we spent time in Santiago, Valparaiso, and Mendoza, Argentina. Our first location was Valparaiso; we spent time exploring the cerros and looking through the many art opportunities in Valparaiso. We stayed in a hostel that itself was a cool, if not disorganized, art community.

We started in the Plaza Sotomayor near the port and continued up through Cerro Concepcion y Cerro Alegre. The hills are covered in artwork and the we spent a lot of time walking and chilling among the paintings and cafes.

The Ocean is what makes Valparaiso. Chile's largest port and its first city, Valparaiso became Chile's most important city and its cultural center during Century XIX. Like most port cities in Chile (Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt, or Antofagasta) Valparaiso was hit hard by the opening of the Panama Canal. These cities now-a-days all seem like shells of their former selves, Valparaiso has been able to hold on to what made it unique. Declared a World Heritage Site in 2003, Valpo itself is a work of art.

The second part of our trip involved crossing the Andes into Mendoza. Mendoza: the land of wine and steak. Mom had the opportunity to take part in both. Our first day there we went on a long horseback riding trip that ended in an asado with the all so famous Argentinian beef. During this trip we rode through the foot hills of the Andes outside the confines of the city limits.

On the second day in Mendoza, we did the bodega tours. We saw the wine bodegas, cavas, and viñas. On the trip we got to see the famous and ancient process of making Argentina's famous wines in person, and of course we tried a little too.

Finis Tierra

This last week, I completed a 5 day 93 kilometer (58 mile) hike through Torres del Paine national park in Southern Patagonia. The park is the most visited in South America and the hike I completed is its most famous one. Called the 'W' the hike literally resembles a W and has 3 unique branches.

The first branch of the W went towards a massive glacier on the edge of Lago Grey. Glacier Grey is a massive ice sheet taking up large portions of the park. Staying at the Refugio Grey, the mirador next door one could see the edge of the advancing glacier looking like someone had put Styrofoam under a microscope.

The next section of the W is the Valle del Frances. This part was the roughest trail and the highest point of elevation of all the trails in Torres del Paine. In this section, the trail leads to a mirador within the valley created by the crescent shaped mountains and the parks most notable river Rio del Frances flows out of this valley.

The coolest, but hardest part of Torres del Paine is carrying everything on your back. I carried all the camping equipment for Sydney and I (although she did lug around all the food). We shared my tiny two person tent with the additional bags of Douglas and Archil since their tent looked like something not made to be taken out of the backyard by people under the age of 10. Our little tent become home in the freezing nights though.

Finally, the last stop on the W is the parks most famous attraction. Giving the park its name, the towers of stone loom over the park's mountains. By camping at the base and making a 45 minute hike in the dark up a way too steep mountainside, one can watch the sunrise over the towers as the change from shimmering in the dark to glowing red.