There's Snow-Way, Jose!!! (8/27)

We finally ventured up the mountain! We live remarkably close to the Andes Mountains. So close, in fact, that people make jokes about temperature differences. They say we live "almost in Argentina"! Well. Almost. Anyway, Deb and I, and our dear friends, Andrés, Priscilla, and Benjamin, decided to "climb every mountain" until we reached the snowy peaks of the nearby Andes. Surprinsingly, it only took us about an hour. Driving it was a dream! There were 48 switchback curves to get to the top, and the vista was incredible!!! If you think I took a lot of pictures of the mountains, you haven't seen anything yet! The crazy thing is there were cacti here and there for a great majority of the drive. Now the cacti weren't covered in snow now, but they had been!!!

Well. Upon arriving at the top of the first snow covered peak, we got out to look around. Farallones is a ski town. Everything you want that has to do with skiing can be found there. You can rent, buy and sell. Or you can just enjoy the slopes. We took some pictures and drove to "free" snow. The next town up (ironically, also a ski town) was El Colorado. Here we could park the car and play in snow. Andrés and I built a snowman named Melvin, named after the giraffe in Madagascar for somewhat obvious reasons. We all went sledding on windshield sun reflectors. (Yep, those things that you put in your car window to make the car less toasty when you park it in the sun.) They were perfect because two people could fit on one. We also went into a ski lodge and inquired about rentals and lift tickets, but we were really interested. We just wanted to see what was going on there.

The drive down was just as pretty and a little warmer. (I didn't mention that the route was one way. Up from 8-2, down from 4-8.) We noticed running water and little water falls as we descended. Another thing we noticed was the smog cap on the valley and how we were leaving the clean air and entering the land of breathing pollution. Makes secondhand smoke seem trite. When we arrived at our appartment, we had pink complections to offer as proof of our trek up into the mountains.