Skating on the Andes

We were up early this morning, excited for a full day of skiing in the Andes. We heated up our leftover pasta for breakfast, grabbed our snowboards and headed out to the road to wait for the bus. When we arrived at the bottom of the lifts, we went to see about some snowboarding lessons (we are both semi-decent skiiers, but have never boarded). Nige was all geared up in his bright orange pants and red & white jacket (one of the shop owners, Alejandro went to his house to get it for him to hire! He is actually the coach of the Spanish Olympic Ski Team). And Kel looked stunning in her 80s metallic blue jacket, double-breasted with gold buttons. Sweet. Of course there were no lessons available in English for a few hours, plus they were way too expensive for us. So we just decided to have a go at snowboarding without lessons. Well, I wouldn´t exactly recommend this to anyone. After about 45 minutes, 3 trips down a nearly flat hill, and countless falls, we decided that we are not able to snowboard without lessons. So, we packed it in and hitched a ride down the hill to town, where we traded in our snowboards for skis.

Alejandro and his Italian wife gave us a lift back up on the mountain, we had a quick trip down an easy hill just to make sure we were comfortable (yep, this is definitely more to our liking since we know how to do it!), we headed straight up the mountain for a few fun runs down. All of our energy used up by this time (sadly, most of it used up not by actually skiing but by going in and out of town) we were ready for lunch, which we had halfway up the mountain. We decided that since it was such a gorgeous, sunny day, we should definitely go all the way to the top of the lifts for some great views. And, according to the map, there are plenty of easy routes down. So we took a really long lift up to the top (one of the best parts) and were not disappointed by the views. The only problem was we needed to gt down. We headed down what we thought was an intermediate run, which to us became a black run because of how icy it was. We attempted to take the lift back down to an easier section bu they didn´t let us. So we had to make our way down the icy slopes on our own. Slowly we made our way down, Kel fell a few times and Nige fell once not from the degree of speed but just standing there watching Kel.

Eventually we made it mid-way down the mountain. Kel was a bit sore and bruised from the black runs and we enjoyed the easier although still icy easy runs to the bottom.

We hitched another ride back to our hostel with a local guy from Chillan. He spoke some english and we had a brief conversation about his veggie and eucalyptus farm. We stripped off our ski clothes and lugged everything back to the rental store. W had decided not to keep skiing because the ice didn´t make it much fun. It was Mac and Cheese for dinner which was good and again we made plenty for breakfast. Another early night in the Andes.