Farellones. Lunes, 16 de Agosto

From Santiago we travelled 45 km (1.5hr drive) East up to Farellones. We soon learnt that in terms of bus travel, Chilean’s have their own form of “Island time”! We patiently waited 55mins for our shuttle.
Later in the week this was repeated with the skifield shuttles arriving and departing anywhere within a window of 30-45mins from their scheduled time.

View from the deck of Lodge Andes.

We had also heard many stories of luggage falling off buses, but did not expect to witness this on our first bus trip! Thankfully not ours! The advice given to us to watch our luggage being tied onto buses helped us out in this instance. Some 50+ hairpin bends and a queezy tum later we arrived at Farellones, a small village and base of three skifields. All of which are linked by chairlifts, should you be willing to pay!

La Parva summit. Montana El Plomo in distance (5,430m). Famous in Chile
because Inca remains were found near the summit in the 1950's.

Santiago under the smog below, seen from La Parva.

Up here we were at approximately the same latitude as Kaitaia but staying at an altitude of approximately 2500m. The ski-fields extend up to an altitude of 3680m (Mt Cook 3754m).

Neither of us had snowboarded at this altitude before and we certainly noticed a vague feeling of faintness and nausea, alongside headaches and unusual fatigue while on the upper-mountain. This settled immediately by descending to the lower mountain and fully resolved within a few days.

Valle Nevado

Valle Nevado

Eco Bano's with a view.

We had five and a half days of brilliant snowboarding on what is the driest snow we have encountered so far. Unfortunately no new snow fell for us during the week but we struck perfect weather, with the temperature reaching up to 8 degrees in the latter part of the week! Valle Nevado was our pick of the mountains, with more than 900 hectares of terrain. We encountered no ques throughout the week which was hard to believe.

Catching a ride up to La Parva with the local Chefs.

Farellones was a tiny village with a “festive atmosphere” spurred on by an international free-ski competition on at El Colorado. We soon found out that the Chileans are hardened drinkers compared with us, adding merely a splash of tonic to a near full glass of vodka. We are having to get used to cigarette smoke in bars and restaurants again.

Sunset over Santiago

Our hostel, Lodge Andes was located 200m from the base of El Colorado. We had a great time with fellow travellers. The lodge brewed their own beer and included breakfast and dinner in a communal dining room, which at first seemed like school camp, but created a very relaxed and sociable atmosphere.

Refugio Los Andes

'A' for A-Frame.

Hostel operators George and Gloria, cooking up a BBQ on our last day up at Farellones. Delicious!.
 Also George attempting to do a haka.

From Farellones we caught a shuttle, a train, a bus and a taxi to the Port-city of Valparaiso.