San Jose de Maipo

So this past weekend we were assigned a project to travel in small groups to one of a list of places and then give a 15 minute presentation to the whole EAP group (68 students) about it. Seeing as all the places were pretty much just foreign names on a piece of paper, my group picked one pretty much at random. The region we picked is called Cajon del Maipo. It is a valley to the southeast of Santiago. We pretty much picked it just because it listed a town called Baños Morales that has hotsprings, although to our dismay, they were cold since its winter and there wasn't any way to get there without having our own car. However, we set out anyway right after school last Friday. As we headed towards the metro station, we pulled out our guide book to figure out how to actually get there and what exactly existed in the region. We figured out we could get there by metro bus for 800 pesos (about $1.75) which was very cheap/easy. Plus it was only about 1.5-2 hours from the city.

We ended up going to a town called San Jose de Maipo since it is the biggest town in the region and it is the only place the bus goes to more than once a day during the winter. The town was really small and cute. It was they type of town that is full of generations of families whose children go off to Santiago for school but always come back to start a family. Plus it was way up in the mountains which were gorgeous and covered in snow. And the air was infinitely better than Santiago air (which is shockingly worse than LA). When we arrived it was about 6pm and already dark so we concentrated on getting food and finding a place to sleep. The place we ended up staying at was called Tutti Cuatti Hostal. It was kind of funky but we were the only residents since its tourist off-season so we got the whole place to ourselves.

Saturday was out day to get out and do stuff. Originally we got in colectivo (a sort of taxi with pre-set prices/routes) and headed for the next town up the road, San Alfonso. We went there because it is a big tourist destination (in the summer) for outdoor activities because it is home to a sort of private park called Cascada de las Animas (Waterfall of the Spirits) where it is set up like a theme park and you can pay to do different things. The prices were a little hefty though and we didn't want to pay to do more than one activity so we decided to continue up the road to the next town San Gabriel. And from there, we just started hiking up the road. Initially we were looking to find a trail but the road wasn't too crowded and had a really cool view of the mountains and all so we just stuck to that.













Somewhere along the way after that, after a couple hours hiking, the yoga sesh began.










ABOVE ON LEFT: Me - ABOVE ON RIGHT: Kathryn - BELOW ON LEFT: Kelsey - BELOW MIDDLE: Kelsey and Cassie - BELOW ON RIGHT: Jocie


















Unfortunately Cassie had us all beat

So I gave up and went for pensive insteadIt was definitely fun though and really nice to get out of the city










Rather than walking back, a kind stranger offered us a ride back to San Alfonso. After a short picnic in the park at San Alfonso (i found peanut butter in the city!) we decided to do the Tirolesas (Zip-Lines) over the river, Río Maipo. One line went across and one back hanging a couple hundred feet about the rapids below. Needless to say it was pretty fun.

From there we hopped in a colectivo back to San Jose. When we got back we found out that this weekend just happened to be the 217th anniversary of the municipality and the town was celebration. The main plaza was full of booths owned by town locals selling everything from old news papers to nuts to jelewelry to tie-dye to tarot cards and magic-type potions (in my experience, there is an unusually high proportion of tarot card readers and fortune tellers in Santiago.) That night too, there was a performance by the Carabinero (Chilean police) Brass Band. Everyone in the town gathered in the high school gym to watch and the band played in sync to movie clips they were showing on a projector behind them starting with Robin Hood, followed by Star Wars, Flashdance, and ultimately, a tribute to Michael Jackson. In the time that we sat there watching, they only played one Chilean song. During that one song, they substituted movie clips with flashing colored lights. It was tight.

Saturday concluded just as awesome as it had started when, as the only guests in the hostal, the two guys that worked the hostal, a Chilean that sat at the front desk and an Argentenian waiter, invited us to an exclusive party in the empty hostal restaurant where had some wine and listened to music.

Sunday was less eventful. We slept in... We tried to see if we could go on a reasonably priced horseback riding trip but couldn't find one that started before 2pm and we wanted to get back to the city at a reasonable hour. We had to settle without.
We spent a few more hours wandering around the town and taking pictures to use for our presentation of the town before heading back to Santiago. For our presentation we decided to do a skit as if three students were in a travel agency and deciding where to go for the weekend. We concluded with a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsYc3c0rA90) that was quite a hit.

While it was a fairly short excursion, it was definitely a lot of fun and very refreshing to escape the city and the smog.