Blogs Are What You Do Abroad: This is Definitely NOT the White Mountains

School and tutoring still haven't started for us. Bree starts on Monday and I have no idea when I finally get to start making back all of the money we have spent here. Since we have no form of income we have been trying to find fun free things to do around the city. The other day we went to the museum of contemporary art (which costs 600 pesos or about a dollar) only to find out its closed due to structural damage!

Since our museum visit was nixed we decided to plan a hike. Given that Santiago is surrounded by the mountains this seemed like an easy task. We already hiked the parque metropolitano which is about 900m tall. We decided that we would try to hike mt manquehue which is relatively small it has two peaks one at 1200m and one at 1800m.

Now when you go hiking in the White Mountains, you whip out your little hiking book and read about the trails to the top and how to get to them and you drive to the start of the trail park your car and head into the woods. Having no guidebook or knowing of no guidebook for hiking around here we were stuck with the internet. We found a site called wikiloc.com which people post hikes and trails they have been on. Great! a trail! posted by some random dude that comes off a street called vio rojo.

I was a bit weary in trusting these random posts about trails but they had pictures and what not and my companions deemed them safe. So we went. Having no car to drive we were stuck taking the metro as far east as possible and then taking a taxi as far north as possible. When we got to the base of the mountain the driver told us Vio rojo was this way and started driving into a gated community. Then as the car scaled the mountain another gated community. Then another. Then past signs that said residents only. Eventually we got to an area where it looked like we should be able to find trails and got out. We followed the road up and saw a sign that said CERRO MANHUEQUE NO FIRES NO CAMPING NO TRASH. Yay a trail! However next to that sign was another sign saying PRIVATE PROPERTY. We thought what the hell and walked through the gap in the barbed wire fence and continued on.

As we marched on we past some nice scenery but were a little uneasy about the idea of following a shoddy barbed wire fence. Until we got to this.

So once again we thought, well what the hell and wandered right on through that barbed wire gate. Once we got to a sketchy rickety shack in the woods we decided it was time to turn around. However that wasn't the end of our hike because there were other trails we hadn't tried yet. Each trail lead to another sketchy rickety shack on the mountain. This was when we decided to go home. So we walked down the mountain through these gated communities to the bottom and caught a taxi home. Well not home, instead we went to California Cantina for some Pisco Sours to commiserate our failed hiking experience!

I will leave you with some random photos from throughout the city.