Trekking El Morado National Monument

Well, I did it! I bought a new tent here in Chile. It is a backpacking tent that is about 5.5 pounds and can be put up in just about 5-10 minutes. It hold two people. It was a pretty exciting purchase!

So, when one makes a purchase such as this one, what does it mean. Well, you have to go backpacking of course. That is exactly what me and Will Lessard (from Virginia) did this past weekend.

We did our planning on Friday and then went to the grocery store to buy our food. We bought stuff to make sandwiches and of course lots of snacks. After the store, I got into contact with Amy who earlier had called me asking if I wanted to go to a movie and get pizza with her. I thought this was a great idea. We ended up going to a movie called La Buena Vida.

It was a fantastic movie and most importantly it was the first all Spanish movie that I understood really, really well (which is very exciting). The movie basically goes with the premise that we are all much more interconnected then we think we are. It is a Chilean movie. I learned that Chilean films are subsidized by the government because otherwise the movies wouldn't be competitive here or in other places in the world. While this at first was strange to me, I think the truth is there could be better movies because of the subsidies. Instead of having just lots of sex, drugs, violence, and other stuff in movies, they can really attack important issues of the day.

After the movie Amy and I went to Pizza Hut (yeah not very Chilean) and ate pizza there that was SO good. I have missed pizza a lot since coming here. I have tried to fill the whole with empanadas, but the truth is, it just isn't the same.

After dinner and a long discussion of politics, I returned back to my apartment to pack for the big camping trip! I stayed up until almost 1:30 packing my stuff in my backpack for the trip, which made for a very short night.

The next morning I got and took a shower and headed out to the bus station where we would take a bus to Banos Morales in the mountains and Maipo Canyon region. We got there in time to buy our ticket and throw our bags in the back of the bus. Later we got on the bus and started our long (almost 3 hour) ride up to the little town. When we got there we walked up to the entrance to the El Morado National Monument and there was a big sign that read "No Camping in the Park unless you are climbing a mountain". So we didn't know what we were going to do. Normally, we would have just camped anyways, but to enter this park you have to pay an entrance fee and also explain your plan to the park ranger. We decided to try and convince the guy that we were going to do some practice mountain climbing. That didn't work he asked to see our gear. So we told him that we didn't have the required gear, so he told us we could only spend the day in the park. We paid the fee and started trekking in. The mountain "El Morado" was really cool looking. There are also glaciers in the national park, but we didn't get far enough to see them. We did get to spend some time hiking in the snow though and it was quite a bit of fun.

After a good hike in the park, we went back to the little hut with the park ranger to tell him we were out of the park. He informed us that we could either pay to pitch our tent in the little town or if we walked farther up the road we could find a place to pitch our tent for free. After paying for the tent, free sounded best to me. We walked up the road a little ways and found a decent place to pitch our tent. We got the tent put up (for the first time) and put all our stuff in. After that we ate our dinner we packed and after that we spent most of our time just chilling and going to bed. There ended up being a beautiful sunset that was projected on the mountains. We got some pretty good pictures of it. It had been a lot of hiking. We did play 20 questions for awhile until I lost so many times that I felt embarrassed. So, then I just went to bed.

The night was pretty cold and there was wind. Will had a HUGE sleeping bag that he said he sweat in all night. It is made for up to -40 degrees F. His sleeping bag cost 300 dollars, mine was 40 dollars from target. So, I got a little cold in the night.

In the morning we woke up, climbed a rock to eat breakfast and look at the mountains. It was pretty neat. Then we packed everything up and then started out for our trek. We trekked farther into the national park from the backside. We ended up turning back so that we could reach the little town for our bus ride back. There is only one bus up in the morning and one bus back in the evening, so if you miss it (especially on sunday) you are screwed. The bus only goes up to the banos morales on saturday and sunday.

We got back to the little town and it was time for lunch. We chilled in the town and met a cool kid who came up to the area to trek as well. He was from Tufts University in Boston. We talked about stuff with him. He was on a mountaineering group at Tufts and he, like Will, had come to Chile mainly for the access to the mountains.

The bus finally came, and taking the advice of a local, we got off sooner then we were expecting allowing us to take a closer and faster metro home.

Overall, the weekend was very successful. The tent worked well and I had a great time exploring some of the natural beauty Chile had to offer.