A Chile Fall

{Originally posted May 4, 2016 @thethingaboutchange.wordpress.com}

Last week I went to Chile for Spring break.  It was a sister/cousin girl trip to visit my cousin Carissa while she still lives there.  Not to mention it helped me knock off 2 times from my 30 x 30 list (cross the equator and travel with my sisters).  All in all, the week was a smashing success.  I wasn’t so sure when we started this dream how it would turn out.  And I felt a lot of the responsibility being the oldest, the only fluent Spanish speaker, and the planner of the trip.  But where I fail, Christ abounds.  And somehow all the details worked together to remind me again, what an incredible gift it is to travel.

Now, chances are, you know every little about Chile.  You may know it’s in South America.  Win!  But what I don’t think you know is that if there is anything you want to experience while traveling- you can experience it in Chile.  Don’t worry- you will soon see what I mean.

Great Things about Chile:

1. Alex and Carissa.  They live there.  They hosted us.  And Alex let Carissa traipse around the country with us for a few days, while being 5 months pregnant.  They are fantastic, brave, loving people.  And I’m so lucky to call them family. 
2. The spectrum of views.  Chile actually has a law against restraining people from enjoying its natural beauty.  Which means we got to hike through someone’s hill-side to chase a sunset and stop along the side of the road to capture a river.  And noone stopped us, even when we had to climb barbed wire fences! 
   Now, this law is not without its merit.  Chile is a beautiful country.  Chile is 2,653 miles long.  That’s roughly 800 miles longer than the US is wide.  With the ocean to the West and the Andes Mountains to the East, the length of the country faces a variety of climate shifts as it crosses each longitudinal marker.  In planning the trip it was my goal to see the spectrum of Chile’s infamous geography.  So, we started in the South and moved our way North.  Here’s a summary in panoramas.
   {Coyhaique, Chile, in the Patagonia region}
   
   {Hilltop view in the capital, Santiago}
   
   {Hillside view in Valparaiso, a coastal city made up of 45 hills}
   
   {The colorful Valparaiso streets} 
   {Another Valparaiso view.  We loved our day trip here!}
   {Salt flats in the desert of San Pedro de Atacama, the driest desert in the world.}
3. The culture.  It’s an interesting combination of ‘cold-climate’ culture and Spanish culture.  It includes kissing your friends on the cheek and squeezing by strangers on the train.  The Spanish is a delicious flavor of sloppy pronunciation and unique vocabulary that was just close enough to Honduran Spanish to keep me mostly in the loop.  And the country, as far as I can tell, is safe to travel.  As a leader of a group of girls, I was concerned about safety.  I was intentional about not being out after dark unless I felt safe in the neighborhood, which turned out to be almost everywhere we went.  Which was a good thing because the sun set at 7 there.
4. The varieties of weather.  As Chile is on the other side of the world (hemisphere wise) it is currently fall in Chile.  However, the farther North you go, the warmer it gets.  Makes it awfully tricky to pack when you anticipate snow-capped mountains and desert flats in the same one week span.  To give a picture:
   {Guess the weather today: but ask a local.}
   
   {What about here?}
   
5. The food.  To be fair, it’s not ALL the best in the world.  But they do literally have the best ice cream (it’s rated in the top 25 in the world).  And, I really enjoyed that shrimp empanada I had!  {See, even Carissa approved!}
   
6. The dogs.  In Chile, stray dogs abound.  But unlike anywhere I’ve been in the world thus far, stray dogs are cared for.  Fed.  Petted.  Enjoyed.  And they followed you everywhere. 

So, that’s what I loved about Chile.  Now it’s time for some trip highlights.

1. {Drinking tea in the Andes after a steep hike to chase the sunset on our first night.}
   
2. {Our last night of blitz, golf, and parting conversation.}
   
3. {Gasping at views as we drove.}
   
4. {The sunrise through our floor to ceiling apartment wall of windows to wake us.}
   
5. {Crossing the equator. Here we are  when the flight map showed we were there.}
    
6. {Traveling with these all-stars.  They didn’t get mad when I accidentally booked a tour for the wrong day and daily told me how much they liked my planning.  Travel isn’t just what you see, it’s who you see it with.  And these gems, they made that 13 hour flight worth it!}
   

Things I would do differently next time:

1. Stay longer.  Short trips mean you miss things, like experiences or sleep, or both.  I think we crammed a lot of things into our week in Chile, so I have no regrets about what we missed out on, as I don’t think we would have had time for anything else.  But what we didn’t get much of was sleep.  You can tell sometimes in these pictures by the looks on our faces and our post taxi nap hair.
   

What I would do next time:

1. All of it.  Again and again. I mean, what’s not to love?
                            

“Travel. As much as you can. As far as you can. As long as you can.  Life’s not meant to be lived in one place.”

“The purpose of this glorious life is not simply to endure it, but to sour, stumble and flourish as you learn to fall in love with existence.  We were born to live my dear, not be merely exist.” – Becca Lee

Advertisement