hiking ...cajon de Maipu

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I woke up pretty early today, because I wanted to go hiking at an area someone recommended in the outskirts of Santiago. A number of people were interested, so I set a 10:30 departure time. Needless to say, we didn’t leave till 11:45 - (this is when south America time can be frustrating). Viki, Step, Erick, Nelifer, and I ended up going -others had to bail because they had to ship luggage to their region. Anyway, we took the red line to the last stop and there was an open air market selling fruit, veggies, fish, flowers, etc with the backdrop of the Andes mountains. It was beautiful - so of course we stopped off to buy some fruit and take some pictures. One vender was letting me try everything he was selling. All the fruit was deciciuos, and I bought most of what I tasted. He was a good salesman. After that we took the bus to the starting point of the trail. We began hiking around 1:50pm (way to late). We had beautiful views of the surrounding hills as we hiked. When we go to the area with a small monument a Chileno bike rider recommended a trail to take to see a better view of everything. He said it was 30 minutes and I’m starteing to notivce that Chilenos say everything is 20-30 mintues away. So one hour later, we still were not near the top. The temperature dropeed significantly and there was snow on some parts of the trail. We stopped for lunch at a great lookout point and we ate fresh bread we bought at the market with peanut butter and avocado. (ps. Avocados or “palta” is super cheap here and they put it on everything including hotdogs, and yes I mean hotdogs) We continued our hike for another 5 minutes and got to a lookout point that was utterly spectacular. We had the snowcapped mountains on the right, the costal mountains on the left, and a suburb of Santiago way down below us. We took lots of pictures and decided to head back down the mountain. It was almost 4pm at this time, and we were told to be off the mountain by 5, 5:30 at the latest. We began hiking down, but were clearly lost. Every “trail” we followed would lead us sideway or up the mountain or just end. I was starting to get a bit anxious - I was only with Steph and Erick at this point because the others had turned back because they wanted to do a modified hike. So they kept telling me not to worry (they are 22 and 23 yrs old). I don’t know if I’m older and wiser or just more cautious, but I was worried. The rationale for following various trails was faulty and as the sun kept going down, the more determined I was to find a way off the mountain. We found a house in the mountain and called over the fence to see if anyone was home. A man came out and when we told him we were lost and could he tell us how to get down, he told us we are very far and we are no longer on the mountain but in “el campo” or the countryside. He told us how to go down, so we followed his instructions and within 40 minutes we were almost out of the hills. There were random cows wandering around as we walked through el campo - which freaked me out as well. Just as we were getting to the bottom, I notice there was a fence between us and the street. I thought maybe we could scale the fence, however it was covered with barbed wire. We stood there for a while until some lady on the street told us we could climb under where there is a break. We looked for the break in the fence, and finally found it and climbed under. I then realized I didn’t have my camera around my wrist or pocket. I looked through my bag - no camera, in my pockets - no camera, back in my bag - still no camera. I was upset once I realized I left my camera somewhere on the mountain. I guess I was so preoccupied with the idea that we would be stuck on the mountain after dark, I didn’t pay attention to anything else. I was pretty angry with myself, but was glad it was my camera and not me on the mountain. I will upload some pictures soon --- I just have to wait for my friends to send them to me. I need to get a new camera before the next part of my trip --- I guess this falls into the unexpected expenses category.
View from the top: ****
Losing my camera : (

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