I take that back, SNOWBOARDING es la raja...

I've now been snowboarding twice here and am totally hooked :) The first time I went to Portillo with Gustavo, my host sisters' cousin and his friends. We spent the weekend in Los Andes, a town about an hour away from here, north of Santiago. We brought the grandparents along and stayed with my host mom's sister and her husband and kids. We watched Enzo play rugby, had an asado (barbeque), and chilled at the house. On Sunday I woke up early and headed out with Gustavo and his friends for the drive up to Portillo. One friend had a truck, the other was a military guy with military friends with season passes, and I borrowed basically all my stuff from them, Jo, and the uncle. Luckily all I had to pay for was renting equipment, pretty sweet. I was the only one snowboarding which was kind of lame because I didn't have anyone to help me pick it back up but I still handled pretty well and had loads of fun. Portillo is beautiful. To get to it you take las curvas, the road that crosses the mountains between Argentina and Chile and is really sketchy and terrifying because people drive as if their cars were like, safety bubble forcefields instead of the flimsy metal boxes they actually are. On the way up we saw a truck that had smashed into the side of the mountain. It was carting a bunch of paper and on the way down there was a mini traffic jam because people had stopped to steal reams of paper and wooden flats from the truck which had been abandoned by that time. There were families hanging around, some guys standing on their piles of paper drinking mate, etc. Of course the guys in our truck had to get in there too so we arrived back home loaded down with brand new printer paper. While they were out stealing from a guy who'd been stealing for way longer and had a huge stash all to himself, I was trying to find out where the cab of the crashed truck was. After a while I realized that the big blue square flat against the wall of the mountain used to be the cab and wasn't just a random piece of the vehicle. Craziness...poor driver.

So now that my random, kind of morbid tangent is over...Portillo is beautiful. The lagoon in the middle is gorgeous and when the sun sets it lights up the mountains. Sunsets in the Andes rival ones back home (sorry Polihale...). It has one run that takes you over the tunnels on the highway and a bunch of harder runs with these pole-lift things called button lifts I think off to the sides. Apparently it's a really good, famous spot. One weird thing is that the ski resorts here are above the tree line so there are no trees anywhere. They're also high up so you can get altitude sickness....definitely not fun.

Last week we went in a huge group to spend the night in Santiago and then head to Valle Nevado for the day. I was originally planning on coming back to Viña that night to take a test early the next day and get my classes over with but I decided to stay for an extra day with Jo and Claire, that's how much fun I had. The views from the mountain is breathtaking, especially from the top of the highest lift because you're surrounded by amazing views on all sides. It was really fun and helpful to go with other snowboarders because I went on harder runs then I did at Portillo and they taught me how to turn better and in general just helped out. There was a really cool ravine thing you could drop into and ride kind of like a halfpipe or even a wave. Snowboarding is like surfing but constantly -- no waiting for sets, you can just do what you want the entire way down the run. Soooo fun :D

The next day my entire body hurt...bad, but in a good way because I haven't done anything really physical in a while. We headed out again bright and early. Turns out it was two for one day so after shoving our way through a gigantic mob of people we finally got lift tickets and were off. The second day was more difficult, I was definitely woozy/probably had a bit of altitude sickness almost the entire day and by the end I was kind of zombieing my way down the runs, trying not to fall too hard. We made it back to Viña safe, sound, and sore.

I'm hopping on a bus to Pucón in two hours so I'll have to put fotos of Valle Nevado up later! I'm getting excited to come home and see everyone. Hope you're all enjoying your summers wherever you all are...I love having such a scattered, adventuring group of friends/family :) cuidense todos, chau!