Cascadas de las Animas

This weekend's adventure was a collectivo ride into Maipo Canyon, where Karlito and I and a group of our BFFs spent two days pretty much doing all things fun. Karl and I met up with our buddy, Paul and we went on a guided hike to the Cascadas de las Animas, or the Waterfalls of the Spirits. The switchbacks were lined with orange wildflowers and the horizon cut by the Andes.

Nightfall brought a bonfire, a barbecue, some old camp songs (much to most everyone's dismay), and some new international friends together for a real fiesta, punctuated with the discovery of a scorpion living in the grill. That night we all bunked up in a two-story cabin (that incidentally has a nicer bathroom than I do at mi casa en Santiago).

On Monday the lot of us went horseback riding on a steep trail up to a place called Meseta. For those of you just joining us, I have been terrified of horseback riding for, let's say, my whole life. I tried it last year, with limited success (my friend Wes ended up holding the reins and guiding my horse for the entire time, as I choked back tears). This was different. The horse was a complete sweetheart, and even trotted a little just to make things fun for me. Next up: Kristen the horse-whisperer.

Back to the ride. It was an enormous amount to take in: everything you'd expect (hills, trees, vistas, etc.) but on a sublime scale, everything terrible and fantastic. Walnut groves, vineyards, ponies (ponies!), cliffs and incredible angles.

Pros: Amazing fruit, mountain water, excellent company, the rush of seeing something for the first time.

Cons: I managed to fall down a flight of wooden stairs (while carrying Karlito's laptop) and banged up my arm pretty badly. Thankfully it's not broken (well, I have full rotation, which leads me to believe it's not broken despite the nasty color of my elbow.)

And your reward for reading this whole post without pictures is: a link to the pictures posted on facebook. (Trust me, the internet here takes a super long time to post pictures, so rather than do it twice, we're just going to link.)

Hasta la Pasta!

k.