| Josh and Jake go to Chile! In July! To go snowboarding.
Our destination this trip: Valle Nevado. A ski area nestled in the Andes outside of Santiago.
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Josh snaps a shot of me in the line waiting to check our luggage. Here's a tip: If you fly AMERICAN AIRLINES don't ever check a bag. And I'm not saying that because the line to check our bags was an hour long. |
Getting close to Santiago, the Andes become visible above the clouds. |
This is was taken on the drive out from Santiago. It's the Winter but it's pretty temperate around Santiago like Northern California. |
We began weaving back and forth up the Andes going around tight turns. |
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After "Curva 40" we are well in to snow and have climbed 7500 feet to an altitude of 9200 feet. |
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Apre Ski Lounge:
Oh, did I forget to mention that our bags weren't on the flight from Miami to Santiago? Yeah, they were still in the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth because American Airlines forgot to transfer our luggage. All we had was our carry-ons. Well there's no reason to dwell on it and Josh is on the job in this picture on his rented cell phone. They don't speak much English at the Santiago American Airlines luggage counter but... I'm sure everything will work out. This wasn't even called the Apre Ski Lounge but that's what Josh and I were calling it. We celebrated our own successfull arrival (even if our luggage wasn't so lucky) with an Irish Coffee and some Chilean beer. |
PUB TRES PUNTAS:
Pub Tres Puntas (Three Points Pub) was Josh and my hangout, for better or worse the whole trip. I initially thought it was Pub Tres Putas (Three Whores Pub) but that's my Spanish for you. There was hardly another sole the Pub (let-alone 3 whores). There was really no nightlife as you can see behind Josh. This is 10pm on Friday night. But without our luggage (yeah, still not there) we didn't have much to do and figured we wouldn't be riding in the morning. |
Pub Tres Puntas may not have 3 whores (or 3 points) but it did have the Cure's Greatest Videos DVD on. They played it all the way through and the bartender couldn't converse a bit in English... but seemed to know 80's song lyrics quite well. |
It snowed a decent amount that night but since we were missing all of our equipment we figured we wouldn't be riding in morning unless the luggage magically showed up while we were out. |
And as long as we weren't riding in the morning... how about some Johnny Walker Blue? At some point Josh and I reversed the conversion rate in our minds so we were convinced legendary JWB was a steal at $5. In reality it was $20, but that's still a good deal and since I didn't have a toothbrush I figured it would do the trick. |
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