Last weekend almost everyone went to Buenos Aires or the Atacama desert, so I've been gettting the experience secondhand. A few of my friends and I have started seriously planning our Macchu Piccu trip, and it's going to be awesome! We looked into doing the Inca Trail, a three to four day hike that ends watching the sun rise from Macchu Piccu. Unfortunately it's now mandatory to hire a guide, cook, and porters to do the trail. So that's out.
On Sunday I got to go hiking near Santiago with another Notre Dame student and his host family. We climbed Cerro Manquehue, a small mountain (about 1600 meters above sea level) to the north of Santiago. It's the tallest cerro in the Santiago Valley and has a great view of... pretty much everything. At least it would if it weren't for the smog. Since it didn't rain this weekend the pollution has been building up and Santiago is under a smog alert right now. But the view from the top was still amazing, you can see just how sprawled out and huge Santiago is.
Language note: cerro is Spanish for "hill" and Manquehue is the Mapuche word for "place of the condors".
Did you take those photos? It looks really pretty...
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