piscodiaries

[piscodiaries]

The Inca Trail and Machu Picchu

In our group of 5 people for the Inca Trail there were 5 Australians. Go to Peru, you might meet some lovely Australians. We went on the trail with Llama Path, doing the 3 Night, 4 Day Classic Trail. Our guide Roger was wonderful, as was the whole experience. We chose Llama Path mostly because they have a reputation for treating their porters well. Porters are the most impressive people, carrying around 20 kilos on their backs, and still seeming like they are not at all struggling with the walk.

A particularly fantastic part of the experience was the food. It was incredible throughout the hike. Every meal was a multi-course extravaganza. Dishes included trout ceviche and a cake on the last night.

The first day was easy, giving me a false sense of security about my abilities as a hiker. I had been taking pills to help with altitude sickness and was starting to enjoy the tingles in my fingers. On the second day I had to stop for breath every 10 seconds as we approached Dead Woman's Pass, at 4215 metres above sea level, the highest point on the trail.

 We got to go downhill after that. Unfortunately, it turns out hiking downhill is almost harder. Luckily we got to go uphill again not long after!

It was nice to spend some quality alone time with a bunch of Inca sites along the trail.

We also got to spend quality time with some llamas.

Machu Picchu was the worst part of the Inca Trail. Looking over at it from the Sun Gate at 6AM was beautiful, but even by then tiny people were already crawling all over it.

By the time we eventually got there it was packed. Everywhere we looked there were showered, nice-smelling people in khaki shorts and white socks up to mid-calf, wearing their "I Heart Machu Picchu" t-shirts. I was a little resentful of them, and their washed hair, as though they hadn't earned the right to be there.

We climbed Wayna Picchu as well, because I had booked it several months in advance, thinking what was an extra 2 hours of hiking after we have gone all that way. Now I think was a good experience, though at the time I did not enjoy it and never wanted to walk anywhere ever again, let alone up a giant rock.

When talking with our group about the train back to Machu Picchu, a girl said she didn't upgrade because it didn't seem necessary from what she had read. Her train was delayed and she was still waiting at the train station in Aguas Calientes when our upgraded train left, several hours after her scheduled departure time. The train ride did include a bizarre fashion show where the train staff tried to sell us Alpaca wool gear by parading down the aisles and twirling. We did not buy any.

#inca trail #machu picchu #hiking #peru

[piscodiaries]

Cusco

There is an abundance of advice available on how to avoid altitude sickness: walk around a little, but not too much; don’t drink alcohol; eat lightly; get enough rest, etc. So obviously as soon as we got to Cusco, Peru (which sits at about 3400 metres above sea level) we took a long walk, and several hours later found ourselves standing in front of a building called “Museo del Pisco" (Pisco Museum). Committed as we are to the pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of our cultural horizons, we entered. Museo del Pisco had a large selection of Pisco infusions, and absolutely nothing making the place a museum. We stayed for several hours before walking back to our hotel and not getting enough rest.

There is also a ChocoMuseo (chocolate cafe) and Museo de la Coca (which seemed to predominantly be a store for strange things made out of coca leaves), as well as several actual museums. The Pre-Columbian Art Museum was especially beautiful. Jai took a few photos of some of our favourite things. This guy was mine:

There are more photos here.

The city is overrun by young girls and old women in traditional dress, holding baby goats or llamas and asking if you want to take a photo with them, for money. I could not work out if it was worse to take a photo with them, or not to take a photo with them. Both ways feel offensive to me. I did not end up getting a picture with them, though I’m glad they’re profiting in some small way from tourists’ desires to take National Geographic-style portraits of poor people.

Cusco is also full of old VW Beetles, so we started playing Punch Buggy. Jai didn’t realise we were playing for the first few days, and unfortunately for him he didn’t get better at the game once he did realise. I have a preternatural sense of when there is a VW Beetle present. It would have been mean to keep score, so we didn’t, but I definitely won.

The site of Inca ruins “Sacsayhuaman” is pronounced, to Jai and I’m sure countless others’ delight, Sexy Woman. From the top you are supposed to be able to look out and see Cusco as the shape of a panther, with Sacsayhuaman as the head. I did not see this. Knowing this story now I think I would still not have seen the panther. The site is a short walk from the Plaza de Armas in terms of distance, but it took us a fairly long time because of the altitude, and also because I am unfit and I don’t really like doing things that are difficult. It was expensive to enter and in my mind has been eclipsed, not at all surprisingly, by the Inca sites we saw while doing the Inca Trail, so perhaps I should have written this earlier. A bunch of teenage Peruvian girls asked for a picture with Jai. He tried to take their camera so he could take a picture of them, when actually what they wanted was a picture, with Jai. They posed happily and he stood awkwardly. Unfortunately the photo I got of the situation was not in focus. He said it was weird but I think he was secretly flattered. Jai has proved very popular with inappropriately young Peruvian girls - the teenager who found his lost iPad in Starbucks in Cusco told him she loves him several days later. I do not blame her, he is quite lovely.

We went to a “traditional Peruvian restaurant” (Deva Restaurant Tipico) and our waiter turned out to be Chilean, from Santiago. We ate Guinea Pig (Cuy) and got to visit the kitchen to see how it is prepared. It had so little meat on it that it seems like an incredible waste, and I still feel guilty over it, but it did taste quite nice. The Alpaca steak was delicious, and I now prefer Ceviche made with trout over salmon or tuna.

Since I can’t really (or don’t) cook, and Jai loves to cook, we booked into Marcelo Batata Cooking Class. We got to tour the fruit and veg market, and then make a few delicious things, finally playing in the kitchen lighting Alpaca meat on fire. A lowlight was finding out exactly how much Pisco and sugar goes into a Pisco Sour, knowledge I had been trying to avoid for 8 months.

Causa:

Alpaca Saltada:

Despite walking everywhere in Cusco, and doing the Inca Trail, we both ended up fatter after our week in Peru. Now we are back in Santiago and have joined the gym.

#cusco #peru #cusco peru

[piscodiaries]

Jai let me post on his food blog for the first time. It's called "¿Hay Pimenta?" because Chilean food has a habit of needing pepper. I wrote about a café called Faustina which is my new favourite place in Santiago.

Faustina

After finding at Colmado that there really is good coffee in Santiago, we were inspired to try out some other places closer to us, so that we wouldn’t get stuck in the same Starbucks swilling rut we had been in before. We found Faustina, mentioned in a "Where to get your coffee" feature in Wain (which seems to be a Chilean magazine for a sub-culture of vaguely-alternative, coffee-drinking, fine-dining nerds).

It has a Scandinavian minimalist decor that made Jai want to move in forever. As well as that the coffee was really good. First, I had an espresso, and Jai had a cappuccino. It’s good to know that it doesn’t matter where we are in the world, Jai will always be handed my coffee, while they try to stick me with the milky, frothy, chocolate-sprinkled nonsense. The coffee was very smooth. We shared a brownie that tasted like a tub of Betty Crocker chocolate icing, which is to say, amazing. 

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[piscodiaries]

Cajon del Maipo #4

The air in Santiago can be nearly impossible to breathe, it feels like being suffocated all the time. Luckily, 1.5 hours outside the city is the beautiful Cajon del Maipo, with nice views and clean air. As we have done several other times, we packed a lunch and headed off early one weekend morning, hoping to see some fresh snow on our walk to the second glacier near Baños Morales. We have not been particularly successful with trips into Cajon del Maipo, reaching our intended destinations only 25% of the time (That is, out of four trips, we have got where we were going once). This was one of the unsuccessful times.

As we had wanted, there was lots of snow. We pulled up to a few parked cars and realised there was too much snow to keep driving, we had to stop and walk the way to the trail, where we would start our hike. Snow is so beautiful, it makes everything look like a magical wonderland. Unfortunately, it turns out that as lovely as snow looks, we did not want lots of it at all, and that lots of snow is hard to walk in. We caught up to people ahead of us putting on snowshoes, and laughed at them wearing tennis rackets on their feet. Then with every step we were plunged knee deep into the snow, and dorky tennis racket shoes seemed less funny. 

After two hours we were still nowhere, on the road buried under snow. We sat on top of rocks by the side of the road and ate sandwiches, and discussed giving up. We gave up and began the walk back to the car, where we did not have dry socks to look forward to. We did not find the trail for the snow, and looked dorkier in our failures than the people wearing snowshoes. At least we could breathe, even if we forgot to bring spare socks.

[piscodiaries]

San Pedro

It was raining when we got to San Pedro. Of course it was raining, I had spent the last week telling my friends and family that we were going to the driest desert in the world. "In parts of the Atacama it has never rained in recorded history!" I wrote excitedly in emails. This is true according to Wikipedia. San Pedro, however, is an oasis in the desert where it actually rains quite frequently. Frequency aside, the town seemed entirely unprepared for rain. 

The roof was leaking in our hostel and there was mud everywhere. There was also cats everywhere. The desk-attendant was a sullen French backpacker, who for the most part was extremely unhelpful, but the first night pointed us in the direction of San Pedro's main street, Caracoles, telling us that everything we would need was on that street. We went to the loudest bar we could find, called Export. I had the strongest Pisco Sour I have ever tasted, and then I had one more. The food was pretty unremarkable, but not the point of Export. It was like a cave inside, and was full of dancing people when we left.

The next day we went to O2 Salon de Té for breakfast. Tanya and Jai both sensibly had eggs and toast, and I got a blood sugar spike eating pancakes with Manjar. (The link here goes to a page for Dulce de leche. One of my Spanish teachers told me that calling Dulce de Leche and Manjar the same thing is like calling Vegemite and Marmite the same, which the obviously are not, and the idea that they are is mildly offensive...but I still think that Dulce de Leche and Manjar are the same, and so does the internet). Our first stop was a salt lake called Laguna Cejar, where you can float in the water similarly to in the Dead Sea. It was pretty cold so we did not, but other people were braver than us. We just stood in front of it. Sometimes we jumped in front of it. The first two here are Jai's photos, and the third is Jai.

I was really excited to go to Laguna Chaxa, in the Los Flamencos National Reserve even though someone on TripAdvisor (I'm obsessed with negative reviews) rated it only 1 star (a rating of "Terrible") for not having enough flamingos. I find it very strange to review nature like this. I would say the park had 3 stars worth of flamingos, an adequate amount, though the best photo I got only had one in it. 

The lake was so still, reflecting the clouds so perfectly it looked like they flamingos were walking in the sky. It was pretty spectacular.

After that we tried to go to lakes in the Alto Plano district, and were turned around by volunteer rescue services because of the snow. They literally had to turn our car around, because we got it stuck in the snow and couldn't manoeuvre out of the mess without their help. Coming back we saw our first llama, which was not wild as we had hoped, but being used to lead a herd of goats. Still good. The first 3 are Jai's photos.

Back in San Pedro, we followed sounds of acoustic guitar into restaurant El Toconar which was a wide-open courtyard full of tables with a fire in the middle, and a bar off to one side. The food was not very good but at least the music was bad covers of 90s Britpop hits.

The next day we got lost trying to find everything. Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) is one of the main places you are supposed to see while in San Pedro, and Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) is another. We overshot a turn off by about 20 minutes, and then took a wrong turn on the way back. The turn took us onto the back road into Valle de la Luna. I ignored the sign that said the road was closed. When we finally did get into the main entrance of Valle de la Luna the next afternoon, it was closing and not nearly as exciting as the other, unregulated side where we had watched the sun go down, and stayed to stare at the stars. (The first photo is mine, and the other ones are Jai's photos - isn't he amazing! The second one is a long exposure of the stars, which were not particularly amazing, even though San Pedro is famous for stargazing. I rate it one star. The moon was nearly full when we went)

Every company offers tours to the El Tatio Geyser field, and they all leave at 4AM, because sunrise at the Geysers is supposed to be the best time to view them. Since we had rented a car we thought we may as well take ourselves. Jai drove up dangerous roads in the dark, trying to follow mental tour guides who disappeared into the darkness ahead of us. We would discover the roads were cliff faces on the way back. There was a lot of snow and some ice on the roads. After an hour and a half we found all the tour company vans, stopped because of too much ice on the road ahead. There was a safer but more difficult alternative to keep going - up a snow-covered incline. We took it, behind a car that stopped halfway up. Jai got out to help them push, and then we were stuck halfway up. We tried for 10 minutes to get the car going again. 100 people watched while the three of us had our turns at driving and pushing the car. I thought we were saved when 2 men ran up the hill towards us, but instead they reversed our car down, so that they could go up. We went up after, and had no trouble without stopping to help anyone else. Sunrise was over but the Geysers were still incredible. Steam rose over the snow and it looked like an apocalyptic dream land.

Once we were into the park we saw another few vans stopped, but there was no trouble this time, just a fox posing for photographs by the side of the road. He looks so cold, I want to give him a hug. 

We made breakfast in the geysers, and became the stars of the place, with lots of people stopping to take photos of us. Boiled eggs and instant mashed potato. I like soft-boiled eggs, and those took about half an hour. It was about half an hour before they were hard-boiled. We forgot to bring salt for the mashed potato, so that was a little disappointing, but Jai's effort to make it was impressive.

We also saw Vicuña, who make the best and most expensive wool, because people have to catch and shear them in the wild and are only allowed to do so every 3 years. They are so beautiful, with the longest eyelashes.

They Geyser field is the highest in the world, more than 4000 meters above sea level. I thought I was getting altitude sickness or having a heart attack when my hand went tingly and numb, but it turned out that was a side effect of the altitude pills Jai and I had taken as a precaution. We also ate a ton of coca leaf extract lollies.

Coca leaf and coca leaf products are really popular around San Pedro. My favourite iteration was Coca flavoured ice cream, which I cannot imagine tastes very good.

Jai and I went to lunch at La Estaka, where we had a chicken curry served in a whole coconut. It was tasty and strange, which are two of my favourite things. It was spicier than anything else I have ever eaten at a restaurant in Chile, which was very good. 

Early on in the stay I locked us out of our hostel room. The hostel did not have a spare key to this room, so they bashed on the door handle until the lock broke. They would get it fixed for us the next day, but they probably still haven't. If you stay in the double room at Backpacker's San Pedro, I'm sorry.

A nice way to describe the hostel would be unpretentious. I'm very pretentious so I kind of hated it. It was a public holiday weekend and everything else was full, so we stayed there. It had enough beds and it wasn't too far from the centre of town, which was all we needed. Tanya and I loved the cats, who were very friendly (in contrast to the French admin), and very soft. Jai is allergic so we probably won't stay at the catpackers again. 

San Pedro, the little city made of mud, and everything around it was really so beautiful. There's more photos from the trip under the San Pedro tag at Jai's blog Tinted Wine & Water with Gas. This is a photo Jai took in the town after the rain cleared.

#san pedro #san pedro de atacama

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Aconcagua

The Lonely Planet recommended a tour to Aconcagua, in Argentina, so we were bound to take it eventually. The tour picked us up at 4.30 AM so that we could make it to the border crossing before they closed it. It was about a 2 hour drive from Santiago. The road to where we were going only goes one way at the moment, while there are repair crews fixing it. So you can leave Chile and enter Argentina on the road from from about 7PM til 6AM. From 7AM til 6PM you can leave Argentina and enter Chile. We spent 3 hours at the Argentinian side of the border crossing, being cleared by customs. The first stop on the tour was an old, naturally formed bridge, Puente del Inca (Bridge of the Inca).

There's a market by the bridge the sells souvenirs. If you leave things in the river long enough they become encased in a crust of sulfur, and then are sold to tourists. It was still very early when we went and most of the displays were not set up yet. I found a picture and a little explanation of how the crust forms, here. While they were interesting, I don't know what I would do with a sulfur-covered shoe. 

Then we went to Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. We didn't get up the mountain. We didn't get to the first base camp. We got to a sign. It was beautiful to look at. Mountains are still very impressive to us.

When we were being picked up the tour guide asked Jai if he had a jacket, and Jai said he was fine because he was wearing thermals. The guide was quite emphatic that Jai should bring a jacket, but Jai had already laughed at me for wearing mine (that might have been because it was my leather jacket and not particularly outdoorsy looking). He was so, so wrong, and had to borrow a jacket from the guide, as well as the hats and gloves the guide recommended we wear for our 30 minute walk to the lookout. Since then we have both bought proper windproof jackets. Mine has feathers in it.

This is the glacier at Aconcagua, at its highest point it is 300m high. I am in love with glaciers.

We passed a lake on the walk up there. Jai thought the lake looked frozen so he stepped on it to make sure. It was and he was surprised and excited, and happy to be wearing a jacket because it was really, really cold. 

Then we left Aconcagua and spent 3 hours trying to cross back into Chile.

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Pisco

Jai's favourite food blog asked a bunch of hipster bartenders what liquor more people should know and a few of them said Pisco. That wouldn't qualify as unknown here but it is pretty cool that Pisco is trending other places. As well as liking Pisco, I really like novelty so when we went to Pisco Mistral a few months ago I convinced Jai to get this Maoi statue-shaped bottle of Pisco. Despite being a province of Chile, I am pretty sure that they do not traditionally drink Pisco in Easter Island. That makes me like the bottles a little more. We finished it yesterday. Today Jai bought me flowers because I was sad. We don't have any vases, so he put them in the bottle. It kind of creeps me out seeing the flowers growing out of his stone head.

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Someone draws this on the street in exactly the same spot every few days. I first saw it around Christmas, I thought it was seasonal. I saw him again on Easter and thought it might be seasonal again. Since then I've looked for him and noticed that he gets washed away and redrawn, the same every time. He looked fresh yesterday.

#Santiago #Chile #Jesus #Chalk drawing #instagram

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Buenos Aires

The air in Buenos Aires really is good. We got off the plane there and could breathe. Santiago is not a dirty city in and of itself, but the black dust covers everything. It hangs in the air, and then drops to cover every surface. We clean, and clean and clean, and still the dust settles over the floors, the chairs, the tables, the walls, ourselves. Not to say that Buenos Aires is a clean city. It feels like it is about to crumble. There are parts of the pavement that have been chiseled away, presumably to be fixed, but which seem to have mostly just been abandoned. We only found one place where they were trying to repair the broken sidewalk. We found it when I stepped into the wet cement. The city made such an impression on me I was glad to be able to make an impression on it in return.

We stayed in San Telmo, full of cobblestone streets and tango dancers. We saw a tango show but did not learn to tango, because neither of us can dance. San Telmo used to be the rich part of the city, but then the rich people moved to Recoleta and Palermo, so those neighbourhoods are now full of cafes and expensive stores. San Telmo has the markets, taking up a 4 kilometre stretch of road. Markets always confuse me, I lose my head. At first everything seems like a great idea, and then nothing does, and then some things do, but I think I saw exactly the same things a little way back down the street and maybe they were cheaper back there. The market had everything: nice leather products; horrible leather products; shaman punks playing pan flutes; beer cans converted into mugs, and other miscellaneous things for tourists. It was impressive to look at but I did not find anything I would buy, unless I were in a fit of guilt and needed a souvenir immediately and did not care what it was.

Everyone told us that we had to go to Recoleta Cemetery. I did not believe them that any cemetery would be worth a visit in a city where we only had two days. However, Recoleta Cemetery is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen. I would spend eternity there if I could, and I suppose some people are lucky enough that they get to. It is a mini city, located inside big brick walls, like a fractal of the larger neighbourhood of Recoleta. There are streets and streets of mausoleums lined up next to each other. Each one is grand, like a multi-storey building, and intricate, like the buildings in Buenos Aires. My favourites were the ones with skulls and crossbones. Evita (Eva Perron) is buried there, but we didn't find where.

Trying to escape from the trap of Lonely Planet tourism, we tried a restaurant on the Saturday night that looked good as we walked past. It was called El Baqueano, which means guide or expert. There was a seven course meal, with wines to match. Everything was sourced from different parts of Argentina. All of the dishes were meat, which seemed to be true of everything in Buenos Aires. We ate llama.   I keep saying that I would much rather live in Buenos Aires than Santiago. I understood the people speaking spanish there which made it seem much more comfortable than Santiago can sometimes seem to me. The food was definitely better. The city seemed more interesting, I liked the sense of impending collapse. My spanish teacher says "Una ciudad con alma," which means "a city with soul," though it sounds much more profound in spanish. At the same time, last year Argentina had an inflation rate of 20% while Chile is currently the best managed South American economy (I have a reference for this). We came home and the food is bad, and I cannot understand the people when they speak, but I wrote home automatically in this sentence. I prefer Carmenere to Malbec. We are home, in Chile. 

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There are about three cafes I go to in Santiago for decent coffee (not Starbucks). One is called Cafe Wonderful. They are good at branding and O.K. at coffee.

#Santiago #Coffee #Café #Cafe Wonderful #Chile #Instagram

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Neruda

“Companions, bury me in Isla Negra, / in front of the sea I know, to each wrinkled area of stones/ and to the waves that my lost eyes/ won’t go back to see...” 

Poets are revered in Chile as rockstars. Brands of pisco are named after them (Pisco Mistral for Gabriela Mistral). Towns form around their houses (Isla Negra, which is not an actual island, and was once just a house). Last Friday we took a trip to Isla Negra to tour the house that Pablo Neruda built there. Neruda was a socialist, and more importantly a socialite. He owned everything that has ever existed in the world, including a narwhal horn. His extensive collections were the result of years of work as a diplomat. It is not clear to me how he had time to do any diplomacy with all the shopping he was apparently doing. There were masks, statues, figureheads from ships, hundreds of glass bottles in different colours and shapes. It was intoxicating for me, I have always loved stuff. Now I want to buy everything I come across. We visited one of his other houses (three wives, three houses) in Santiago the weekend before. It's called "La Chascona" and named after his messy haired wife. There were three bars in the one house. For the people.

#Pablo Neruda #Neruda #Isla Negra #La Chascona #Chile #Santiago

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Pisco Elqui

The Elqui Valley was full of things with magical properties. Crystrals, tarot cards, jam. Everything that we found there was supposed to heal you, guide you, or teach you. Well, perhaps not the Pisco. At least, I didn't feel healed from it. We had lunch before our tour of Pisco Mistral. The restaurant had many interestingly flavoured pisco sours. I had a few of them, as well. Then we did the tour, and tasting, at the distillery. After the tasting we got another pisco sour from the bar. We were allowed to keep our "Pisco Mistral" pisco glasses. I struggled to stay awake the rest of the afternoon. It got harder to stay awake after we found a small winery just outside of Pisco Elqui to do a tasting at. This winery has the best red wine I have tasted in Chile, and I have tasted a few now. They are a small boutique winery and do not sell in stores. We bought six bottles while we were there and are looking at getting more mailed to us.

As well as Pisco, the Elqui valley is also famous for the stars. Conditions in the Elqui Valley are supposed to be perfect for stargazing, so we stayed until til late at night and did a tour of an observatory (Observatorio del Pangue) where we got to see galaxies and nebulas. Before this, I had no idea that so many stars existed. I was freezing, I forgot to take a jumper. Jai lent me his thermal top and I was still freezing. Without his thermal top, that he had thoughtfully packed, he ran around taking long exposure photos and practically doing star jumps to stay warm. This is one of the photos:

We stayed in a really nice hostel (El Arbol) in La Serena. I am a spoiled brat and had never stayed in a hostel before - I mean, the first time I went hiking with Jai we stayed in a Sheraton hotel. So I had no idea what it was going to be like. This hostel had a shared bathroom. I didn't understand how frustrating that would be, until every time I tried to use it someone else already was, and we were only sharing between 6 people. It feels like a great frugal, personal victory to say that overall I didn't mind that much. If every hostel were like this I could definitely do that. But apparently they're usually gross. Anyway, I'm not a snob anymore so that is cool. We didn't really see any of La Serena, so I guess we will have to go back.

#La Serena #Pisco Elqui #Pisco Mistral #Valle del Elqui #Chile

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Not Going to Mendoza

Mendoza is supposed to be beautiful, interesting, and full of Argentinian wine, but I have no idea if that's true. Last weekend we booked a hotel and hired a rental car, planning a quick trip over the border. My tourist visa was about to run out, and I could renew it by border-hopping, while waiting for my other visa to come through. At the last minute we couldn't get a permit to take the rental car from Chile to Argentina. Instead we stayed in Santiago and drank Chilean wine. Now I cannot leave the country until my visa has finished processing. We have plane tickets booked to Buenos Aires in about a month. It is supposed to be a lot cooler than Santiago. Hopefully we will get to find out.

#visa #Mendoza #Santiago #Chile #getting nowhere

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Parking in Chile.

#estacionamientos #signs #Santiago #Chile #JaiPhoto

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Tanya's place. Afternoon on a rooftop by a pool in Santiago. No sharks. I love summer.

#Santiago #Chile #rooftop pool

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El Morado

Jai and I have tried and failed two times to visit El Morado Natural Monument in a park outside of Baños Morales. We wanted to see glaciers pretty badly, but were convinced that we would never be able to see these particular ones. The first week we ended up lost and stranded in the Andes. The week after I got us lost, we rented a car. In a car, we reasoned, nothing could stop us. As it turned out, more mudslides could stop us; the roads were closed, and police were waiting to turn us away. Perhaps if I read the local news, our second problem finding the glaciers could have been avoided. That weekend we ended up at another park on the other side of Santiago, called La Campaña. We drove for eight hours in total that day, and walked for one hour.

Being gluttons for punishment, we tried again. The only bus to Baños Morales was supposed to leave at 8:30. We got to the bus station at Bellavista La Florida just before 8.30, and found a bus to Cajon del Maipo was about to leave. Unfortunately, the bus to Baños Morales actually leaves at 7.30. We had failed again, but this time Jai had organised the trip, so his failure was fine with me. The bus that left Bellavista La Florida at 8.30 was supposed to meet the 7.30 bus in San Jose de Maipo, but the drivers were speculating that it might not today. Jai decided we would risk it. I'm fairly sure that because Jai decided that instead of me, everything worked out ok.

The walk was quite steep at first, so that I didn't notice how long the flat part of the walk was, I was just glad to not be walking uphill anymore. The walk back was a surprising length, despite being the same walk only in the opposite direction. The glacier itself was hidden by a heavy cloud for most of the time we could see it. It cracked when the cloud moved and sun hit it. The noise was probably the highlight of the trip.

It is incredible to be able to live in a place where we can take walks in the Andes for something to do on a Saturday. Chile is an amazing country to look at and we are very lucky to be here. We were even luckier to finally get to El Morado.

And finally, the glacier:

#El Morado #Cajon del Maipo #Chile #Glacier

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Jai and I took our cameras to Cerro Santa Lucia on Saturday. I'm finally learning to use my dSLR on a setting other than automatic. It is making photography more of an exciting pass-time. Jai is obsessed with lenses now, he has 4 so far and 2 more on the way.

#Santiago #Chile #Santa Lucia