Yerba Loca

Yesterday we went for a hike in Yerba Loca, a national park about 25 km west of Santiago:



A pretty spectacular waterfall near a glacier at the end of the trail...



Sunset towards the end of the hike...

Fall in Santiago (or, Long Time No Blog)

Fall is finally here, and even though it still hasn't rained for more than 2 minutes since October, temperatures are starting to drop and the leaves are turning colors. Here's a picture from a hike we took a couple of days ago:


Claire has been coaching girls' basketball and I've been coaching futbolito (small-field, 6-on-6 soccer), so we've been pretty busy over the past month or so. Claire's team had the chance to participate in a tournament in Uruguay last weekend, where they got to play schools from Argentina, Bolivia, and the rest of South America and ended up finishing in 2nd place overall (behind Ecuador).

In mid-March I went with a few other teachers and about fifty students on an outdoor education trip in Chillan (about 600 km south of Santiago). The site was full of good hikes - here I am with my friend (and fellow math teacher) Jason:


Last weekend was my 30th birthday, and I got about the best gift possible from my friend Aaron when he came down and gave us a surprise visit. He was in Peru climbing Machu Picchu, and he took a detour from his trip to fly down to Santiago and spend the weekend. Super, super awesome, and it made my birthday. Here's a shot from a three-quarters-of-Beardog-rockout-session on our back porch (we missed you and needed you, Boj!):


Thanks for the visit, Arrow. We miss you!!

I did the Santiago half-marathon last weekend, and then another highlight came when our friend Laura (on spring break from LPHS) came into town for a visit. We had Thursday and Friday off of work for Easter (thank you, country of Catholics), and so we took off for Cajon de Maipo after work on Wednesday. After some pretty incredible hiking and a stop off at some thermal springs, we drove to Santa Cruz and the Colchagua valley (one of Chile's main regions for growing red-wine grapes).

Cajon de Maipo:




Claire representing LP at the thermal springs:


This is the time of year for grape harvesting, so we were pretty excited for some vineyard tours in Santa Cruz... but it was Good Friday and so EVERYTHING was shut down for day. All wasn't lost, however, and we spent the morning exploring the Santa Cruz Art and History Museum, which among other things had a pretty impressive collection of Easter Island artifacts and shrunken heads (Yep. Shrunken heads.).

We're in the process of getting our July break plans in order, and even though we only have three total weeks of vacation we're looking forward to getting back to the States and seeing as many people as we can. Until then, we hope everyone is doing well!

Finally - in honor of Easter, this installment of the Mullets of Chile is a photo we took of an actual painting in the Santa Cruz art museum where a chilean artist depicts Jesus confronting the lawyers as a child. El Mullet del Hijo de Dio speaks for itself:

Summer's over...

It's been almost a month since our last post, and a lot has happened over the last few weeks. We had a great finish to our summer - it was the Lessek family's turn to visit, and my dad and Lynda came down a couple of days after we got home from Panama.

Their arrival was slightly delayed because Lynda was detained (temporarily) by customs officials for sneaking an apple from the U.S. into Chile. The irony is that the apple, bought in the U.S., was actually imported from Chile in the first place. Hmmmm... Anyway, here she is with her "Welcome to Chile! Here is your fine!" documentation:

Before heading out on a road-trip, we spent a few days around Santiago. A hike in a nature sanctuary near our school:


My dad attempting to conduct some business from the hike, Claire mocking his efforts from behind his back:


Empanadas in the city center:


One of many exhibits from the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art (this particular piece was a birthday party where all the attendees were dogs that were eating from plates of butter. Next door to this room was a similar set-up except with cats.):


From Santiago we went to Cajon de Maipo and stayed in a cabin at a place called Cascada de las Animas ("waterfall of the spirit"):


We were there for three days and two nights, and we spent the first day hiking in the canyon and visiting some thermal springs near an old mining camp:


(Wouldn't be Chile without some goats along the way...)




We went horseback ridin the next morning:



Me honing my chilean-rodeo skills:




After that we went rafting and then hiking to the nearby waterfalls:



From Cajon de Maipo we drove to winery named Casa Silva near the town of Santa Cruz (about a 150 km south of Santiago) and stayed for a couple of days:



From Casa Silva we took a day to drive to Zapallar, a coastal town north of Valparaiso. (My dad and Lynda deserve some credit here for sitting in the back of our little Suzuki for this whole trip!) Along the way we stopped in San Antonio for an empanada lunch:


Zapallar was incredibly pretty, with an ocean-walk that reminded us a little of Newport, RI. The hotel was on a hill that overlooks the water, and we spent our time in Zappallar on the beach, by the pool, and taking walks along the cliffs:





After a couple of days in Zappallar it was time to head back to Santiago. We stopped in a tiny town called Valle Hermoso, which had nothing but small storefronts selling handmade sweaters - of which there were probably 200, all in a row. Needless to say, Claire was pretty into it...


Our last stop was another vineyard. It's called Errazuriz (one of the largest in Chile), near San Fernando:



We were sad to see my parents leave, and we were almost as sad to have to report back to work the following week. Now we're back in full swing, already a couple of weeks into the second semester (which feels kind of strange - coming back from summer break to the same classes and students you had beforehand). We're both coaching this semester - Claire is doing girls' basketball and I'm doing boy's futbolito (a smaller-field version of soccer that they play during the off-season of 11 on 11). We're getting back to a normal routine, and picking up the way we left off in December (even the weather is the same - it hasn't rained since early November, and it's not likely to rain again until late April).

In the spirit of returning to the familiar, we'll leave this post with The Mullet of the Week. I can only assume from his t-shirt that this particular gentleman is touting the fact that he has been growing this mullet-strand for sixteen years, and so from this point on this style can be called The Dieciséis ("The Sixteen"). Here it is, in all its precisely-aged glory:

We miss everyone back home and hope that things are going well!