Monos!

That's right, monkeys. While thinking about this post one theme kept popping up in my mind, monkeys! So here we go, the update for the last two weeks-

Let's start off in Mendoza. I was there for 4 days with Ian Holmen helping him celebrate his CCHS graduation. We had a great little hostal that was right in the middle of downtown, complete with our own patio! We spent the first day wandering the streets and plazas scoping out places for dinner. Argentina is famous for having good beef at very very cheap prices. Day two we decided to find Cerro La Gloria, a tiny little hike up to a huge monument (see photos). After asking around 10 people and getting 9 bad pieces of advice we finally found the right micro and were off. Little did we know, there's a zoo right next to the Cerro! So of course we went on a little zoo hike as well. Funny thing is, there were wild monkeys everywhere in the zoo! They were running along the handrails next to us, swinging from the trees above us and taunting the monkeys in the cages. Speaking of monkeys in cages, the howler monkeys were the showstoppers at the zoo...they had a bunch of cute babies! However, what was not so cute was the sight of one howler monkey eating another's baby....I'm still having nightmares. Very National Geographic. Emphasis on the Graphic.
Day three we took a bus about 2 hours outside of Mendoza to a little town called Potrerillos. It's a fairly popular tourist town during the summer months but now in the winter (yeah it's winter down here, kinda weird) it was completely deserted. We spent the day hiking around this gorgeous pristine lake in the foothills of the Andes, which were really quite impressive. Day four I headed back to Vina, thankfully the pass was open!

The next adventure was a bit closer to home. Last weekend I returned to La Campana this time with Dan. He has a tent and I had some freeze dried food (thanks to a sweet care package) so we decided to go camping. Due to the nature of the park, we had to base camp in the campground. So we spent the days hiking up the side of the mountain and the nights huddled around a swingin' campfire. We were commenting on how camping away from all the Spanish speaking people and the hustle and bustle of our respective cities made it feel like we were back in the Bob Marshall or the Boreal Forest...until we heard the monkeys! That's right, on Friday the 13th we were 'serenaded' by monkeys for most of the night. Sounds fun but was actually quite unnerving at first!

Today marks the beginning of my last full weekend in Vina del Mar. It still hasn't sunk in. I spent the whole day in Valparaiso (which has easily become my favorite place in Chile). Jose, my fabulous guide to all things Chilean, took me to his favorite places. Those included Cerro Alegre (translates literally to Happy Hill, it's the artsy-est neighborhood of the creative city) then we went to La Sebastiana. La Sebastiana is Pablo Neruda's house and is now a museum of sorts, completely amazing. He built the house to resemble Valaparaiso so the whole house is full of twists and turns, small hallways and a million staircases (some that lead to just a wall!). Each wall is a different vibrant color and all the windows that face the sea are huge and those that face the rest of the city are portholes like on a ship. I could EASILY live a content life in that house. Afterwards, we went to a fabulous little Cafe for Once and watched the sunset over the city and the ocean. Sadly I have no pictures of any of this as my camera bit the dust last weekend.

This next week is "finals". Not nearly as stressful as school back home. I've got one take home test, one in class test and one presentacion and then I'm done! Next Friday is my going away party (ah!) and then on the 29th Dan and I fly out to Arica. From Arica we are going to bus our way into Peru (it was much cheaper than flying all the way there) and make our way up to Macchu Pichu. From there, we've got around 2 weeks to do whatever strikes our fancy in Peru before flying back to Santiago on the 15th and then I take off again on the 16th, this time the destination is Tofte.

It's been quite the life down here, to put it mildly. I'm already planning my next trip to Chile :)
See you soon!
Clare