Corralco, Chile – August 31st – September 5th, 2017

South of Nevados de Chillan is Corralco, a ski area situated on a massive volcano – it would be our home for the next week and consequently the last week of our year-long adventure. On the drive we stocked up on groceries (primarily peanut butter) at the Jumbo grocery story, which is a mega store which could be described as the child of papa Wal-Mart (but higher quality) and mama Ikea (without all the furniture, but with the awesome cafeteria). Once in Corralco, we settled into our “chalet”, which was really just a cabin, relaxed, and did some research for the rest of the evening.

We took our time in the next morning since it was a storm day. If you are a skier you know how crazy that sounds: the snow is falling, fresh pow ready for the taking, and we are taking our time… only in Chile. On a Chilean snow day you can count on the resort being closed, which was exactly right. To be fair, it was also very windy. Regardless, that morning was our first glimpse of the area, and wow was it beautiful. Surrounded by unique trees in the parking area, the view up to the vast bald (treeless) cone-like volcano was spectacular. After discovering that none of the side roads were ripe for exploring thanks to mother nature, we went back into town and found ourselves at Termas Manzanar hot springs where we soaked for a couple hours.

After an unsuccessful day of skiing (or not skiing) on our first full day, the rest of our time at Corralco was exceptional. From the top of the resort, the views were seemingly endless with scattered volcanic peaks as far as you could see. We spent the next two days skiing the resort. Our first day in-bounds there was a freeride competition which was entertaining to watch, but made the lift lines a little long. Andy didn’t help matters by falling on the T-bar a few times – apparently T-bars are hard for slow-boarders booohooo. On the 2^nd day, we decided to summit Longuimay volcano. From the top of the resort we boot packed up to quickly find ourselves in a pretty precarious situation on an icy ridge with a long slide to both sides. I chickened out because I am a complete wuss when it comes to traction (boohoo) and Andy and Matt continued up. The boot pack was a slog (so I hear), taking about 2 hours to reach the summit. I definitely wish I would have had crampons with me because I am sure the view from the top was unreal… not to mention the REALLY long epic run down to the base of the resort.

Hot springs, cabin fever, and Corralco. 

 That evening back at the cabin, we learned the sad news that Andy’s family dog, Cocoa (a fun-loving brown lab that always found a way to make everyone laugh) would be put down the next morning. After saying his goodbye’s over the phone, we turned in early, all a little somber. The next day, about the same time as Cocoa was being put to sleep, we had a visitor at the cabin door -  an old black lab! She came straight up to Andy and wanted pets and belly rubs. It is as if she knew that her presence was exactly what he needed.

Cabin dogs and skiing.

We toured about 3-hours up the SE face of Lonquimay on our last ski day in Chile. It felt good to stretch our legs and breathe in the perfect blue-bird day after an emotional night and morning. We topped out at about 8000 ft. and had a nice long run down to the bottom on mostly champagne powder. No better way to end the trip!

That night we started making our way back to Santiago. We splurged for the night at a super cool dome yurt-cabin combo. Except for having to scrap together all the USD and CLP we had left to pay for the dome since apparently, they didn’t take credit cards (oops), the trip back to the US was uneventful.

Party lap on our last day of skiing in Chile and the cabin-yurt on the way back to Santiago. 

It was bittersweet to be heading home. The last year had pushed us to our breaking points, been beyond words rewarding, and forever changed us for the better. I cannot lie and say we weren’t looking forward to being re-united with Tucker, eating accessible fresh food without worrying about Montezuma’s revenge, and squishing our toes into carpet (who knew we would miss carpet so much). It wasn’t over though, after all, this trip was only the beginning of “Dandy’s Grand Adventure.”

Nevados de Chillan, Chile – August 22nd – 31st, 2017

After about a 400 km drive south from Santiago, we arrived in Chillian where we finished our errands before heading to Las Trancas / Nevados de Chillan where we would spend the next week. Matt had to use the WiFi for work while Andy and I finished grocery shopping and sorted out the sim card for the phone (not an easy process with lots of driving around to different places and guessing what the locals were saying, but perseverance won).

It was snowing by the time we reached the AirBnB – good omen for the week to come! The cabin was a quaint little A-frame in the woods with a loft, loved it! The only thing that was not ideal was the sim card – which turns out did not provide service at the cabin. Can’t win them all.

For the next 8 days, we settled into a blissful routine: get up early, gear up, head to the mountains, ski until exhausted, return to the cabin, drink Chilean wine, eat, enjoy friendship, sleep, repeat. There was only one exception to the routine: when it snowed so much that we couldn’t get the car out and ended up drinking wine all day instead of just in the evening.

The routine. Top right photo shows when we ran out of wine on the snow day. The photo directly underneath proves that cutting onions with goggles works like a charm!

I cannot emphasize enough how epic the skiing was! I never thought I would say this, but my only complaint (which is kind of a big one) was that there was “too much snow and not enough people.” Only in Chile would this be a problem. No matter how much it snows, the employees start work at the same time – opening time for the resort of course. They do not show up early to clear the lifts and start the chair turning, no NO, they show up at 9am (when the resort opens) and moze around contemplating working. With so much snow and not enough people to justify the effort of clearing the lifts, not much work was actually accomplished and on many occasions we found ourselves agitated and waiting around for hours (with about a dozen other westerners) while we waited for the lifts to start. This only happened on “Chile time” and, because the avalanche danger was so high, backcountry skiing was out of the question on the best powder days.

Touring Nevados de Chillan. Note the fully buried, inoperable lift. 

Skiing the resort.

Speaking of avalanches…  on day 4 we experienced probably the most terrifying 2-hours of our ski careers (or lack of careers – we are not that good). We were riding up the t-bar near the top of the resort when Andy and Matt saw a snowboarder trigger an avalanche on an out-of-bounds slope to the left of the t-bar. Three snowboarders had been cutting a heavily loaded slope which led directly into a decent sized gully (in this case terrain trap). The thing Andy and Matt saw was the slope give way, dropping about 3 feet of snow on top of the 3^rd snowboarder who fell and was dragged down below sight line. All four of us (Scott, our new Australian friend included) quickly made our way to the gully which was now completed buried in avalanche debris. Since we knew the avalanche danger was very high that day, all of us were wearing avalanche beacons and carried shovels and probes. We quickly got to work, yelling up to other skiers on the t-bar to tell ski patrol! We soon discovered that none of the snowboarders were wearing active beacons and the clock was ticking to uncover the buried group. Ski patrol responded surprisingly fast and soon we had about 40 people including ski patrol, resort staff, and a handful of tourists with avalanche training probing the vast debris field hoping to find a person and not a body. Ten, 20, 30 minutes past and the hope for survival was lessening by the minute. Adrenaline was running VERY high and the work was absolutely exhausting. To make matters worse the probes were too short to reach the bottom of the snow field and eventually a pit was dug near where the snowboarder was last seen and we began to make our way up the debris field hoping to get lucky. After an hour and a half of probing and digging, ski patrol was alerted on their radios that the snowboarders had been found having a beer in the lodge. Apparently, they had ridden the avalanche out, narrowly missing being buried, and decided not to tell anybody. The angle of the slope/gully made it so that it was impossible to see down and know this from the t-bar. Although we were obviously relieved and it was great practical training, I NEVER want to experience anything like that again. Ski patrol invited us to join them for a celebration beer and meal which we did, but our day of skiing was over. It took most of the evening for our heart rates to return to their new normal (likely about 10 bpm higher than that morning).        

Avalanche "recovery"

We ended up touring 4 days and skiing the resort 3 days at Nevados de Chillan – although in full disclosure, some of the touring days were actually side country (the resort sold cheap freeride tickets for a single lift up and you could tour from the top of the lifts).  The highlight tour was to a hot springs in a massive valley below the iconic Chillan Volcano. We had actually intended to climb the volcano, but as we were waiting for Scott, we looked up and the volcano farted – ash and smoke filled the air around the top and we were quickly convinced that a change of plans was in order. We skinned from the top of the resort up and over into a large valley with a natural hot springs that we could not find. With the help of some other skiers, we eventually found the small hot stream buried in 10+ feet of snow. The water was not deep enough to get in, but we confirmed it was warm and ate lunch before returning out of hot springs valley. The climb out was exhausting with crazy winds at the top. Rather than ski the route we were hoping to, we traversed through the wind and exposed rocks to ski the icy resort down to the car. The whole way down we kept saying how sticky our skis felt, turns out the volcanic ash from the morning’s flatulating caused ash to become one with the wax on our bases. I can now confirm, 2 years later, that the ash is very difficult to get out of the base of your skis.   

Hot springs tour.

Santiago, Chile – August 20th – 22nd, 2017

Getting to Santiago was a pleasant 2-day journey – for once I am not being sarcastic. We relaxed in Sucre in the morning, drank some lemonade, read a book, and eventually caught the local bus to the airport. From Sucre we flew to Cochabamba for a quick layover and then on to La Paz for our last night in Bolivia. After some quick pretty typical taxi drama, we made it to Host San Sebastian, a home stay on El Alto with a really nice local owner that chatted with us for a while and brought us fruit and coca tea before bed!

Before leaving for the airport yet again, our host prepared breakfast complete with an entire carafe of strong coffee which Andy happily went to town on. It wasn’t until the host came in a few minutes later and looked at Andy with a shocked horrified expression, that he realized that the coffee was actually coffee concentrate, meant to be watered down. Andy had finished the entire carafe and the home owner called him “loco”. We all had a good laugh!

After an uneventful flight, we settled into an airport hotel in Santiago, worked out at the “gym”, watched Goldfinger in Spanish, sat in the sauna, and ate an expensive hotel restaurant dinner of gnocchi and chocolate flan – all around a pretty decent couple days of travel.

Now that our travels to Chile were complete, we returned to the airport… to pick up Matt and the rental car! Matt found us easily with our awesome welcome sign, the rental car pickup went smoothly, and before we knew it we were off to the Vega Central market. At the market, we learned very quickly that Chilean Spanish is not Spanish at all, it is a crazy unintelligible language that sounds nothing like Spanish (okay… technically it is Spanish, but you would never know it). I could not even understand numbers to know how much the produce cost – I literally opened my hand of money and they grabbed the coins. They understood what I said just fine, but it was like starting all over again learning the language. Anyway, I think they were honest and the market was awesome with so many amazing food choices! Since we are staying at AirBnB’s for the next 2 weeks, we stocked up before hitting the road south to Chillian for some POW!

Around Santiago.

Sucre, Bolivia – August 12th – 20th, 2017

After setting a fast past since Lima in mid-July, we decided to slow down and spend an entire week in Sucre. We ended up ditching the first homestay after finding ourselves disgusted by the cleanliness and asking ourselves the question, “Why we were continuing to slum it when we were way under budget, tired of the struggle, and finishing the trip in less than a month?” The homestay was also a 20-minute walk into the city and get this, up hill both ways! So, instead, we more than doubled our accommodation cost and landed in a ridiculously nice apartment in the center of town. So worth it!

Roaming around Sucre.

More roaming around Sucre.

 Sucre is a beautiful city with lots of tourist infrastructure, so naturally, being burnt out as we were, we spent a good majority of our time there watching Game of Thrones. We also managed to tear ourselves away long enough to eat some really amazing food, see the sites around the city, and take the local bus to a dinosaur park with thousands of dinosaur footprints embalmed (strange choice of words I realize) in a giant wall – super cool! We also walked up Cerro Sica Sica where we found no view whatsoever, took a cooking class, and toured the Basilica San Francisco.

Food in Sucre

Super fun dinosaur park with so many dino footprints!

Beauty of Sucre!

The paragraph above makes us sound busier than we really were. We did, however, spent a good bit of time getting some R&R in the form of massages, haircuts, and reading. The massage was going really well until I was completely convinced that the man issuing the massage was purposefully placing his testicles in my hand, which was lying face up on the table while I was face down. If only I had learned the Spanish phrase for, “Can you please stop putting your balls in my hand.” I might have been able to avoid being stiff as a board for the rest of the massage. Even though we sought out the fanciest looking “salon”, my haircut was also an epic fail. The hairdresser literally clumped my dry hair together, chopped it 3 times, and then said she was done. Again, a well-practiced Spanish sentence which said something along the lines of, “Excuse me, but you just butchered my hair and I do not think this is worth $10. Also, I think you are scamming me,” could have really come in handy. Instead, I left in shame, had a good cry after, and wore my hair up until we returned to the US, where it took 2 haircuts and 6 months to be pseudo normal again. While my hair looked like I got it caught in a lawnmower, Andy had a very successful haircut and shave… good for him. As for the reading: We were seeking a quiet place to read and enjoy the weather, when we landed at the cemetery. It was actually really nice until we became inescapably aware that this was indeed a cemetery where dead people live. Our realization came in the form of a MASSIVE congregation wailing in grief as they buried their loved one right next to where we were reading… we left as soon as we could weed our way through flow of bereaved Catholics.

Since we would return to the US without insurance, we also took this opportunity to get some quality Bolivian medical care. You think I am kidding, but no, it was actually fantastic (except the organization and confusion about providing samples and picking up results, that was kind of ridiculous). We wandered into what we thought was a clinic, but turned out to be an Emergency Room at the hospital. Since we were clearly tourists and the locals are insanely helpful (and very curious), the ER allowed us to be emitted for physicals. The only catch – it would cost us $2 each. We guiltily cut the line of waiting, actually sick, patients, and saw the doctor. Although the doc spoke no English, he was thorough, surmised that Andy had a stomach infection, and ordered a full set of blood, stool, and urine lab work for both of us. The next morning, we arrived to return the now full stool and urine sample cups and get blood drawn. What we did not realize is that blood is only drawn between very limited hours very early in the morning and we had missed the deadline. They graciously took our feces and pee though. We ended up returning the next morning and without issue got the blood drawn. If you know me well, you know I am terrified of needles, but they guy that took my blood was hands down the best I have ever had. I barely even felt it and he distracted me perfectly. Thanks Bolivian vampire! The results came back a few days later (which we figured out through multiple rounds of trial and error) and although we struggled to understand them, all seemed healthy except that the doc was right, Andy had a e-coli and was prescribed targeted antibiotics (they had even run the test to figure out which antibiotics would be most effective). The entire hospital adventure cost us less than $35 total for 2 people. My cholesterol is great by the way, thanks for asking.

We reluctantly left Sucre … stop over in La Paz … off to Chile for ski-cation!