Pomaire-poquito fome

Pomaire. This is a small town outside of Santiago. Just an hour south of town, its 4 main streets are full of santiaguinos on the weekends. The clay abundant soil of the surrounding hills allows for the pottery industry to continue to thrive here. Every shop is either sells pottery or is a restaurant. Other than being a giant tourist trap, the quality of the pottery is very high. The restaurants here are decent, but when you come for an afternoon the only choice is to eat/shop. We chose to eat.
This place makes empanadas that weight about a kilo. get stoked. Various gringos in this picture who live on alberto magno (my street). Most are from saint joseph's u. Also in this picture is my host mom and another host mom.

Pichilemu (continued)

This is the view from the front window of our cabin/house. Que lindo el mar!


The beach at Pichilemu.

Looking out from the Agustin Ross Park out at the beach and the town to the right.

Life is way slower here. Daily siesta is law. Quite the opposite from Santiago.

World-famous surf here. Punto Lobos. The location for all of Chile's biggest surf contests.
Surfers here are amazing. Everyone of them was getting really long rides and shredding. Quite impressive. Also at most on a weekend only 7-10 people in the lineup for these waves, but each of them can kill it. impressive otra vez

the group.

Cerro San Cristobal

This is a little mountain in the middle of Santiago. Really cool spot to get good views, smog permitting, of the Andes and of the city. I also here that it is a great mountain to run up if you are in that kind of shape. Someday.

La Moneda

This the 'White House' of Chilean government. The building houses the offices of the President and all his cabinet etc. It was really not that interesting of a tour, but we all went because we felt it was something we had to do if living in Sanitago.

This courtyard was actually kind of cool. Here: giant fountain with groves of orange trees.

Look to the upper portion of this picture. Terremoto was strong no doubt.

Pichilemu Project Video

Here is a little video I put together after a trip to Pichilemu. It is a small surf town about 3 hours south in a bus from Santiago. The town really got hit by the tsunami following the February Terremoto, and has an interesting vibe. All the surf community is super nice and hospitable. The waves there are also among some of the best in the world. But the people in town who live and work there are sometimes gruff and do not want anything to do with outsiders. Mostly because their fishing industry got messed up by the tsunami(maremoto) and they are trying to slowly rebuild.

It was a great trip regardless and I cannot wait to go back. The video was made as a portion of a project profiling life in Pichilemu, before and after the maremoto, and of course profiling our time there.

Enjoy!

My school for July: La Catolica Universidad de Chile, Campus Oriente

This is the art, theater and music class for the catholic university in Santiago, Chile. This grounds are beautiful and the campus lies in a great residential part of town on the border of barrios: Providencia and Nunoa.

The picture above is a classic hallway at the campus. The arches form the structures for all of the buildings, which open onto 5 different courtyards.

This is our soccer field. Out of the 53 students in my program, we get at least 6 to play soccer (plus chileans) after school. The field is in great condition, and has an awesome view of Cerro San Cristobol at one end, and la cordillera de Los Andes at the other.

chao.

forgot about Algorrobo, Chile's Cancun...

one pic of the place we went for our retreat/orientation. Place is beautiful. All the chileans were telling us how crazy the place is in the summer. It was still in the high 60s when we were and this is winter. ok chao

Valle Nevado pt.1

We skied 5 days after an early season storm, and we had fresh tracks all morning. Pretty amazing skiing on this side of the world. The norm is to use old school GS/All-Mountain skis and rip the groomers no matter the conditions. Basically off-piste skiing does not interest people here.

Thus a few gringos and I left from Providencia early in the am, and left Santiago going up a fairly steep mountain road until we reached snow. The base elevation of Valle Nevado is 9,000 feet. That is equivalent to the top of Squaw in the US. The Andes>The Sierras.
(a view looking south of the surrounding range)


This is Valle Nevado Resort Walking in from where the ski shuttle dropped us off. I highly recommend using SkiVan or SkiTotal services to get from urban Santiago up into the three nearest resorts.


This is me. Behind me are three big peaks. To my right is the hikeable terrain/cirque of La Parva ski resort. It is a small, yet vertical resort with much more challenging terrain than Valle Nevado. I plan to ski there soon. But behind me are cerro leonara, cerro plomo and cerro bismark. The big one with the glacier going across it is Cerro Plomo. It is a crazy mountain, almost 18,000 feet.

It was a great day, cant complain when you are sliding on snow!!