weekend in Santiago

Went to El Morado (I thought it was Dorado) on Saturday. Morado means purple because the rocks are purple. (Dorado means goldish). Went with a bunch of people with school and their main tour guide Jorge (pronounced hore hay).

10 of us took the van down south to the mountain-glacier: Jorge, a woman from Switzerland who is working in a vineyard, Karina and Carolina two brazilian engineers on vacation, Melanie an Aussie on a one year round-the-world trip, Kristian a german student who lived in new york so has a new york accent, Julia an international studies student from germany, Ken an american escaping his divorce and a guy from spain, and one Canadian me made up the expedition.

It was a simple but long trek as it was up a valley left by a glacier, ie it was a semi straight not-not-too steep walk up to a valley, for which at the top was the melting glacier. It took about 3 hours to ascend and 1-2 hours to descend as the party sort of split up. I was sorta in the middle.

The highlight was to see the glacier because I didn´t realize where the glacier was... What I mean is you look at a mountain and see the ice and think there it is, but it´s more than that as there are tons and tons under the parts that don´t have ice on top. For example the main goal of the trip was to get to the cave which is an ice cave, with a thin - say half a meter layer of rocks that lay on top, but within are 2-100 metre thick layers of ice.

Mi family insist that I buy a long sleeve shirt and get or borrow a hat to avoid getting sun burnt. Both were good ideas as I didn´t get burnt at all. I can´t remember the last time I was in that much sun - no shade in the valley - for over 8 hours.