Skiing with Chile's Finest
Trip Start
Feb 25, 2007
1
47
72
Trip End
Aug 25, 2007
Valle Nevado,
Chile
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
We arrived on Friday and didnīt ski on the weekend. Weekdays are cheaper and we can only really afford 4 days, mon to thurs. Ski pass and skis and boots is only 35 quid a day though, and saved money on the ski suits and accomodation so not too bad. We have run out of food, we came up with a lot in the minibus (buses cant reach the resort) but have eaten it all and there are no shops here, just very expensive restaurants. We have ordered for more to be delivered though, the nearest town is about an hour away, Santiago is only 2 and a half hours away.
We went out today for our first days skiing, it was incredible. The snow and the weatehr are perfect, sun and blue skies and powder. Off piste is amazing here, Only 39km of runs in the ski area, pretty much covered it all today, we were out from 8.30 till 5, making the most of our money. Amazing stuff though, the best bit is we have the place to ourselves. The runs were empty all morning, literally we saw about 10 other skiers and onyl a few more in the afternoon, didnt have to queue once for a lift and sking down pistes with just us on them.
We have access to all the hotels facilities and especially enjoying the outdoor hot tub pool, surrounded by snow, with views of the sunset over the mountains. Awesome. Bit like the one we had in austria.
Great fun being 7, Matt and James are really descent guys, they really dont seem 27, its wierd.
Had a night out in the hotel bar on sat with some people we met, most people here are wealthy chileans, ended up in us fooling around in our appartment with hair removal cream and i now have a massive bald patch, it is disgusting and caught the sun today! and Marco has no eyebrows. The Chilean girls got a call from their dad saying come back to the hotel, I don't think he really believed them when they said we had an appartment.
Skiing on Tuesday was even quieter, empty slopes again and perfect conditions, one Chilean girl had to stop skiign she was laughing so muich as we passed over on the ski lift in our suits.
Wednesday it snowed, heavily and we got up but decided it wasn't worth paying for a day pass, it was very windy and we were told the lifts would probably close later. Had an awesome 5 a side game of footy in the gym though, so the day wasn't wasted. More food was delivered, at a fairly reasonable price compared to the restaurants, so living off hotel reception fruit and sweets was no longer a problem. Also made use of the hotel hot tub whilst snow was falling pretty heavily.
We decided to head out in the snow on thursday and although visibilty was very poor and it was freezing cold on the lifts, we had some good runs in the powder, by this time it was getting pretty deep. We couldn't last as long and not everyone was enjoying it so much so we didnt stay out as late as the other days.
Friday was an absolute stonker of a day, woke up and had to pack up our stuff and get out of the appartment, left our bags at reception and decided as we hadn't skiid wednesday, we couldn't resist the fresh snow, now with blue skies and sunshine. It was the best skiing I have ever experienced, many runs weren't pisted and the powder was over my knees, awesome fun. The runs were slightly busier but we kept skiing along the hill tops and finding virgin off piste snow and then skiing down in lines and admiring our lone wiggling tracks all the way down the mountain.
The
