In October, one of the girls in my program, Bekah, and I decided to travel to Chile. Living in Buenos Aires is incredibly fast-paced, and after a few weekends in the big city, we needed to try something new. Thus, we booked a flight to Chile, spending a weekend in the environment surrounding Santiago and the port city Valparaíso. We landed in Santiago Thursday night, and we only had time to try some traditional Chilean food, caldillo de mariscos y pastel de choclo (seafood soup and corn bread), before we needed to sleep for our 5 a.m. wakeup call for our trip the next day. The next morning, we took a tour to the Cajón del Maipo, a gorge and reservoir about an hour away from Santiago. We drove around the reserve, stopping to overlook the reserve and going right to the water. The snow capped mountains reminded me of how close we were to the Andes Mountains — the longest continental mountain range in the world. On the tour, we also stopped by to see some local farms and businesses, and we saw both goats and a llama. We finished up the tour with a picnic at a local ranch with some games with the rest of our tour group.

After that tour, we promptly got on a bus to Valparaíso, a port city less than tour hours from Santiago. We dedicated our entire Saturday to exploring Valparaíso. Many neighborhoods are designated as UNESCO heritage sites due to their unique characteristics, colorful buildings along the multiple hills in the city. These colorful buildings are also covered in murals and public art, a trademark of the city. Bekah and I spent the morning exploring the harbor to look for sea lions as well as a local market and candy shop. We walked even more in the afternoon, where we took a walking tour with a local guide around Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción, the most popular neighborhoods in the city. We finished our night at an Italian restaurant that overlooks the city, and we watched the sunset over the hills with the ocean in the background.

Sunday was our beach day, and we took a city bus headed north to Viña del Mar, the sister city of Valparaíso. Viña del Mar has many of the tourist beaches, and we spent the entire morning sunbathing (I hate to report that I did get sunburned). In the afternoon, we went even further north to the Concón Dunes, fossil sand dunes that are millions of years old. We wanted to watch the sunset over the dunes, but the wind was so aggressive that sand was blowing into our eyes nonstop. Instead, we headed back to Valparaíso to pack to travel home the following day, where we took a bus back to Santiago (it broke down midway, but we were quickly rescued) and then took a flight back to Buenos Aires.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: CEA CAPA: Engineering in Buenos Aires