Cajon de Maipo, part 1

Hi Everyone,

First of all, I'm sorry for the lack of posts of late.  I have, and always will have, plenty to write about, it's just a question of me sitting down and dedicating the time to these postings.  Moving forward, I will attempt to make them as regular as possible - ideally, I will update on average every 2 days.  Ok, disclaimers aside.  Now onto the good stuff.

This past weekend was a long weekend for the people of Santiago.  Once again, it's a mystery holiday whose origins completely elude me, but so be it.  If I already have the day off, I figure asking questions about the holiday can only get me into trouble.  So we had the 31st and 1st off, and I'm very grateful to Saint Halloween and Saint Hangover for their gracious contributions to Chilean culture.

For the long weekend, I went with my friend Wasi, and his two friends Carla and Rey to a campground in Cajon de Maipo, a river-basin area just outside of the city.  It was a beautiful hour-long drive out there, which featured a lot of the Chilean flora and fauna.  Sadly, my camera was never ready for the fauna, but the flora has been captured in detail.  Here are a few shots of the drive out there:

Something that doesn't quite translate in these pictures is the steepness of these mountains.  Most of the mountains I've seen in my life have been from the Appalachian range, or some of the Rockies.  These mountains are STEEP.  Many of them are to the point where you'd need to have 4 points of contact on the mountainside to make it up.  But don't worry, this hasn't dissuaded me from climbing at all.

After about an hour's drive or so, we made it to the campsite.  It was a very cool area just on a side of the river.  The tents were set up like so:

 And my friends posed like so:

Dinner that night consisted of rice, potatoes, chicken legs AND steak.  It was easily the heartiest I've ever eaten while camping. 

The steak was cooking when this picture was taken.

Afterwards, there was a music show played in the front of the campground, which was mostly trance/electronic music.  Not usually my favorite, but it was an interesting change of pace.

I have to cut this post a little short - I was just called in to teach another class today at 5:15.  So, we'll pick up with the rest of the trip tomorrow!  Or maybe later tonight!  But probably tomorrow!

Also, for those of you who haven't seen my mug in a while, here's a shot of yours truly.

Que se vayan bien!