I have been one lucky girl and have gotten the opportunity to do quite a bit of sightseeing here in Chile.
My first weekend adventure of April was to Santiago. There, some friends and I participated in the Santiago Marathon (just the 10K part, don't be too impressed), went for a hike in the nearby and stunning Cajon de Maipo where we saw waterfalls and ate fruit off wild trees, and saw many of the traditional cultural attractions like la Moneda, San Cristobal Zoo, and Santa Lucia. I really liked Santiago; it seems like there's a ton to do and I'm anxious to go back and walk around some more and finish my sightseeing to-do list that my Lee friend, Emily, made for me from her month there.
The following week, for a total of six days, I went with my host mom and sister to Argentina. Like I said, my host mom is from there, so we spent a couple days with her brother and his family in Mendoza, which is about 6 or 7 by bus (but TWELVE if you go on a busy, Easter weekend like we did because you get stuck in customs for 6 hours in the middle of the night and the young bus attendant guy starts telling you he's in love with you... but that's another story) and then spent a couple days with her father in San Rafael, a couple hours north of there. In San Rafael we went to this place called Valle Grande, I think, that reminded me so much of Zion National Park in Utah. It was this gorgeous, deserty mountain canyon with a river running through it where we did white water tubing and we all came away having had a great time and with bruises on our knees from smacking rocks.
The week after that, 5 friends and I flew to Punta Arenas which, I believe, is the southernmost actual town in Chile. We took about a billion buses and stuff and eventually found ourselves in the middle of nowhere in a rainstorm in Patagonia. We pitched our tents and began what was to be the most challenging outdoor experience of my life. Haha. It wasn't really that bad; we were just, from that point forward, constantly constantly wet and cold, likely because we chose to go to Patagonia in the very last month the park is open before they shut it down for anything but extreme winter sports. We had decent views the whole time, but the second day was my absolute favorite; it went as follows: we climbed out of our tent in the morning to find the ground dusted in snow. Initially we were discouraged, as we'd all already ran out of dry clothes, however as we reluctantly began our hike, the sky was clear and the snow dusting the Torres de Paine that towered above us as well as the trees and ground gave everything a very peaceful feel. The day got nicer and the sun came out and soon we were hiking in t shirts through the peaks covered in autumn-orange trees. We soon came to the lake we would follow the next several days that was the strangest, jade green color and was surrounded by both cliffs and rolling hills that kind of made me think of Ireland although I don't really know what Ireland looks like. The final morning we hiked to a view of some glaciers that were pretty amazing. After 4 nights of camping we went back to civilization for our last night and made dinner and met interesting people at our hostel, including these three Aussies who were seriously recreating the Motorcycle Diaries and then some - riding from Argentina to California. So sweet!
And for the final trip... the world's driest desert. Well, so we've been told. On our trip to the San Pedro de Atacama in the north of Chile, we were told we were seeing the 'most ___' everything several times: biggest copper mine, highest geyers, driest desert. Who knows? I went with four friends from my university and we had a really fun time in this teeny pueblo that seriously had one, pedestrian street lined with adobe buildings housing restaurants and tourist offices and very little else. Our first day we started by renting bikes and riding them just outside of town to some Incan ruins which were interesting and also had an impressive view of the range of dusty red mountains surrounding the town. On other days we did tours that allowed us to watch the sun set in the famous Valley of the Moon, swim in a lake so full of salt that our feet floated to the surface with no effort at all, see a whole valley full of geysers, and go to a salt flat which was just this lake that looked like it was frozen over, but was in fact just covered in salt that you could walk on and that reflected a really pretty sunset.
And that about covers it. I feel pretty good about how much of Chile I've covered and think I got the travel bug out of my system... for now. ;)
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