a taste of the andes...and not the mint

alright so this time i am very unmotivated in writing this blog, probably because about 432897432 happened since last time. haha. i'll start with a week ago...

soooo, kelsey, laura, and i finally got a sort of trip planned: Valdivia! valdivia is south of santiago by about ten hours and a little west. it sits on a river and is super cute. so anyways, we took an overnight bus there and arrived wednesday morning. we got to what we thought was our cheap hostel...turns out this was a classy bed and breakfast and cost $90/night. ruhroh. but anyways, after we got settled there we headed over and walked around town a bit, saw the fresh seafood market and some lobos marinos (see ottery things, not sure exactly but they like to get out of the river and lay out next to the sidewalk...pretty funny). walking around valdivia was nice. it reminded me a lot of wisco and there were a lot less catcalls and carhonking. score! so after walking around a bit we decided to go to the beach in niebla. so we got our swimsuits on and stepped off the bus and...crap. no beach. some dirt. definitely a lake, though. that was pretty. our afternoon was unspolied, however, as there was also this little culural festival which included food, music, and artesan stands. we decided to get some empanadas (the cheese ones were delish, the seafood ones were...well...questionable) and we talked to this chilean family who was sitting next to us. i was distracted the whole time by the dad who had an uncanny resemblance to johnny depp, but it was an interesting time nonetheless. after walking around looking for a fort we didn't actually go in, we headed back to valdivia and enjoyed a nice seafood dinner on the lake. yumbo.


next day included the kuntsmann brewery which we were excited to tour...but the unfortunately don't actually give tours...so we just ate food and drank their beer instead. it was a fine trade off, really. after the brewery, we took the bus home and ran into one of the bartenders, named Juan Pablo, from the brewery and we started talking to him and went and watched an outdoor volleyball tournament which was actually way more fun than i thought it would be. that night we just went back to the hostel because the hostel was in a sort of shady part of town. sorry juan pablo.

alright, next day we headed off to pucon, which is about three hours away. then we hopped another bus up to huerquehue national park. the bus ride was a treacherous hour ride up a mountainside. fairly terrifying. so we got to the park, which is located in the southern andes. this means that the andes are smaller but covered in trees and absolutely beautiful. there were lakes everywhere. the first day we found one such lake and just laid there in the sun. amazing. the second day we did about an 8 mile hike to two of the other lakes and it was just so beautiful. getting there was a little scary as the trails are not maintained like they are in the US. this means there are tree roots everywhere trying to trip you, mud to make you slide, and very few handrails. awesome. the hike also made me realize i should probably exercise more than once every seven months...but ehh. probably not. here are some pictures of the beauty.




so that was really really awesome. back in santiago now and i've had three days of my "intensive" spanish class. not so intensive but really not bad at all. fun maybe in a weird way. or at least something today that isn't tourism. i'm actually quite exited for real classes to start and to see the campus with everyone on it. it's really pretty right now but really empty except for the stray dogs the school takes in that live there. (i love those dogs though b/c i know they are rabies free so i can actually pet them). also, more people have been coming to the dorms so that's been really fun. there are two people from my program who live here now and so far we have a really great group.

and that's it...i think this was exceptionally boring so sorry about that. but at least i took the effort to copy and past those pictures in...haha.