Skiing in August? This is College!

Yesterday I went skiing in the Andes with three American friends from my program. I woke up at 6, ate a quick breakfast and grabbed the lunch that I had packed the night before and went to catch the bus to the ski rental shop.  My friends and I met up at the shop at 7:30, picked out our gear and paid $20 for a van from the ski rental shop to drive us into the mountains to Valle Nevado, the ski area we wanted to go to.  (To call it a resort would be giving it too much credit.)  The trip into the mountains was beautiful, we drove into a valley to get out of Santiago and then went over the top of one mountain and to the top of the next.  At one point, we went through 39 switchbacks in a row, there were signs on the road that counted every one!  Once we got about halfway up, we were able to look back and see the city, complete with a heavy blanket of smog, that we had left behind.  After an hour and a half, we were finally at the Valle Nevado.  There are a couple of hotels there, a lift ticket shop and a ski rental shop and nothing else, as it is located directly on top of the Andes.  The day started out with no clouds and great skiing.  We met a group of American snowboarders at the terrain park who were having a "summer camp in the Andes".  NBD.  After lunch, heavy clouds rolled in, which forced us to ski slower. We finished up our skiing and met back at the van at 5 to head back to Santiago, just as it started to snow.  The descent was very slow, as the roads weren't plowed and we had to stop to put chains on our tires.  Besides the us four Americans, there were a Brazilian couple, a single Brazilian, and an Argentinian father and daughter in the van with us.  We were all able to communicate in Spanish, which was great because we needed something to pass the time with because the trip down ended up taking three hours!  All that time I have spent following soccer came in handy, I was able to talk with the Brazilians about the sport.  Despite the treacherous trip down, I had a blast yesterday and am happy to be able to say that I have skied in the Andes!

On top of the Andes!

View from the lift

On our way up the switchbacks