Sometimes we walked around more in one day, than I would normally do in one week. That is a little bit exaggerated, but I did wake up sore a few times! I really do need to exercise. However in one of our city tour walks, I did stumble across a really cute outdoor gymnasium. It is really close to my old hostal and I heard stories about this gym, but never discovered it for myself. I am going to motivate myself to run there, exercise, and then honestly, walk home.
We spent 4 days in Santiago getting to know the city, all over Centro Santiago and a bit in Providencia and Santiago. One of those walks was accidental as we walked down Cerro San Cristobal, and found ourselves on the border of Providencia and Santiago...never did that before! She got to try a good amount of Chilean drinks, food, etc. as well all the classic Chilean tourist spots. I need to avoid those places for a bit, since I will be going there again when my parents come!!!!
On Sunday, we went to Caijon de Maipo, which is about an hour and half outside of Santiago next to some mountains and a river, which kind of looks like chocolate milk. We had a little picnic and went white water rafting with Cristian and my friend Renato. I went white water rafting once in Colorado, but this was more intense and way more fun. The tour guide taught us how to fall onto the bottom of the raft, change the balance of the boat with our weight, and how to bring people back into the raft if they fell out...or in our case, jumped out on purpose to swim around in the calmer areas.
It was nice to be out of the city, relaxing and enjoying the outdoors. However, it was not the last. We spent the next three days in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. It was the first hostal experience for Young-Jin and Renato and we met some Argentinians and a girl from Germany. We also randomly ran into one of Renato's friends, Nestor and hung out with him for a bit on our trip. He was super awesome (by the way I say super a lot now in English and in Spanish) and his English was amazing (he is an English teacher). But, if I met him in the states, I would have thought he was from England.
With all of Valparaiso's hills, I was surprising more tired after a day of walking in Santiago! We walked around a bunch, spent a day relaxing at Vina's beaches (where even though I put on sunblock and was only there for 2 hours, I still got a mean burn on my back, legs, and butt!), and we also saw one of Pablo Neruda's houses, La Sebastiana. It was a really cool house, with more amazing views with each floor. I plan on going to La Chascona, another one of his houses in Santiago with the parents.
View from La Sebastiana
La Sebastiana
I didn't really see anything new of Chile, but it was interesting being a tour guide and having a fresh pair of eyes see everything for the first time. Hope you had a wonderful time Young-Jin!!! Thanks for making it down here so we could enjoy ourselves in CHILE! Now I have 10 days to rest and then my parents are coming, where we are heading down to Chiloe and I get to do another hot city tour of Santiago. You guys are in for an exhausting jam-packed week of adventuring. Can't wait and hope you are ready!!!
Blogs that I have been meaning to write and are still coming:
1. Argentina
2. Homage to Gringas
3. Holidays
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