Andes Mountains..... check

This past weekend, a group of us took a trip over to Santiago to explore the Andes Mountains.  Some may think that I'm a bad wife, but even though Jason had to work, I still went.  He was planning on going, but UOP pulled someone off this assignment to go to another one, but that guy's replacement wasn't able to come until Sunday so Jason, being the Chief - that makes him sound important...and he is - covered the weekend day shift.  I know he wasn't happy he didn't get to go, but we should have just planned better and gone the weekend prior to this. 
So, about our trip over - transportation in this country is SUPER cheap.  Our taxi from the hotel to the bus station (of course that's not super cheap) was more expensive than our 1.5 hr bus ride to Santiago.  The bus ride was only $6 for an assigned seat.  The first trip, we didn't have assigned seats and all 5 of us kept getting kicked out of our seats.  UH - WHY didn't they just assign us a seat?  After arriving in Santiago, we had about a 20 min subway ride to the stop closest to the hotel.  That was less than $1.

 We got to the hotel and checked in, booked our Andes Mountain Excursion for the next day and headed out.  With no agenda, we made our way over to Barrio Bellavista and rode the "Funicular" (basically an open elevator) up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal which is a hill that rises about 300m above Santiago.  We got there basically just as the sun had set.  At the very top is a statue of the Virgin Mary.  They were celebrating her this holiday weekend, so it was busy in the park.

On Sunday, we took a group tour up to the Andes, the worlds largest continental mountain range that extends over 7 countries.  Of course, most of these pictures are from that.  The guide spoke English, although he didn't really guide us anywhere.  They just dropped us off in three places and told us what time to be back on the bus.....  which the Brazilians along for the trip didn't seem to understand.  A winding trip up the mountain on a coach bus that was going faster than I would have liked = carsick.  Almost.  I had to close my eyes and NOT look out the window for the entire trip up and down the mountain.  I managed to get a few glimpses but then thought of what would have happened if he hit a patch of ice (because he was going fast) and we tumbled....down....down...down.  Luckily, that didn't happen.  Anyway, trip was nice and the mountains were beautiful.  There were places to go skiing, snowboarding, tubing and ziplining although none of us felt like going on such a short time frame.  At the highest point, we were 3000 meters up! 

 

That's all I have to update you on for now.  I can now check "visiting the Andes Mountains" off my bucket list.  Not that it was always on there, but now that I've seen them, it is.  I didn't get spit on and we didn't have any birds poop on us (that happened to another girl here on Thursday while eating lunch : / ), either so overall, it was a good, dry weekend.