My big kid life: Continuing the life of an adventurous "student": Valle Nevado

It's almost spring here, which means there aren't many more ski days left. Naturally we needed to another ski day so I began looking into how we could ski another resort besides Portillo since we skied there last month.

Friday morning came early as Mark, Logan, Murphy, Austin, Mat, Rob, and I met at the bus terminal in Viña at 5:15. We left promptly at 5:30 headed to Santiago on a big tour bus that was at least 90 degrees inside. After arriving in Santiago at 7am we headed to the metro for our 30 minute subway ride. 7:30am+Friday+big city=rush hour so consequently we were jammed against the window for the ride with our backpacks and many clothing layers. We got off the subway and began looking for a building called "Omni" to meet up with our tour group. We could feel all the stares from the Chileans as they see 7 gringos walking down the street with backpacks just trying to go skiing. One guy saw us and motioned us in the right direction and thank God he did or we would've continued wandering. After meeting up with the tour group, SantiagoExchange, we headed on our 37km drive to the Andes. There had to be at least 50 switchbacks on the road up the mountain. Logan said it was probably the prettiest drive he's been on. I would compare it to Going-to-the-sun road in Glacier National Park in Montana. It was beautiful with waterfalls, desert cacti and then finally snow. We got all situated with rentals and were skiing by 11am. You know those songs that you hear and can't get out of your head? Well before skiing we heard "You're the Voice" by John Farham and that's all we thought about all day, because we had no idea what song it was and we only knew part of the chorus which goes "woah, woah, wo-oh oh...."(check out the song and it'll be in your head too) Stay tuned as the boys have pledged to make an epic music video to it . Anyway, the snow wasn't the greatest, but it's hard to complain when we're all used to skiing in either Colorado or Utah(Mat goes to Westminster in Salt Lake and the rest of us go to DU). It's just late in the season here and nowhere has had a very good year for snow. We had fun being on a pretty deserted mountain skiing fast and making jumps. There really is no feeling like flying down a mountain as fast as you can with the wind straight in your face. A cheeseburger and french fry lunch was included and enjoyed, except maybe by Mat who probably got food poisoning from it. Going to ski resorts here you see a lot of Brazilians and North Americans so it's fun to meet new people and exchange stories of why you're here in Chile. After a snack of peanut butter sandwiches, Pringles and carrots (it was like me feeding my little kindergarten soccer team) we left the resort at 5pm and headed to the metro. Riding the metro at 6:30pm on a Friday is also a very busy time. This time we were even more cramped than the morning. Santiago's metro is the 18th busiest subway in the world. Daily there are 2,400,000 passengers that use South America's most extensive subway system. Chile is a safe country but when you're using public transportation and everything about you screams "gringo" you've got to be careful, which we were of course. We bought tickets for a 7:50pm bus ride back to Viña and were able to get home for the last third of the Chilean National futbol game (Chile won 3-0). At the end of the day I was elated. Happy to have skied, been with friends, and been in the mountains. Really, what more could one ask for?