el aire dulce y viaje sin plan.

So this is what they mean when they say the air is as sweet as honey when la primavera comes. I took a whimisicle trip to Cajon de Maipo with Christy and coming back caked in 3 day's worth of dirt, sweat, minerals, and only God knows what, I could not stop smiling while walking down the road with my massive green mochila and dusty pants. Breathing in and out was one of the most pleasant treats of Santiago I have partaken in in a while. How amazing that God can tickle our brains and hearts with the most simple of things. The air is filled with the sweetness of flowers and honey. And the perfect breeze. And how comforting to the heart to seet he sight of shedded-parka people, and kids playing in the illuminated parks at night. Winter is disappearing and spring is coming. God, why are you so amazing?

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cajón de maipo (aka): "wehavenoideawhatwe'redoingbutGod'swithus-trip"

This wonderful weekend has been so filled with happiness, peace, and more awe of God than before.

On Thursday I whimsically mass blasted a facebook message to some people asking whether or not they wanted to join me in my randomness and go to Cajon de Maipo. This place is sort of a local Yosemite for Santiaguinos.. I think. It has things ranging from picnicing with the family to horseback riding to hard-core mountaineering. Rad no? Only Christy, my UCsd buddy, decided to come along so.. on Friday, after collecting all my stuff together, we headed to, por metro, down to the 2nd to last stop of linea 4. And... we got off with our massive backpacks, not knowing what to do next. Thanks to the instructions of ever-so-wise Grace Mao Wu, we promptly asked a random person (or two.. or three) how to get to Maipo. They pointed us in the direction of a random corner.. and we jumped onto a blue metrobus. numero 72. payed the fee to our destination (which in reality, we had no idea where it was. We had only heard of the name). As about 40 minutes passed, the busy city scene turned into a tranquil, meadowy-looking, boonie-land. We poked each other motioning to ask someone on the bus where we should get off, where we could stay somewhere, etc. After a long time of throwing the job around, Christy finally asked a lady where we should get off if we wanted to get to the place and she poked us when the Plaza de Armas de San Jose came up. We jumped off and found ourselves in a tiny little pueblo with colorful houses, a tiny plaza, and a bunch of mini "supermercados".

And that was San Jose. We ventured around the pueblo asking people where we could stay and they pointed us to a few places. We eventually, after circling around the entire place, settled in a hospedaje... Tio Valentine. wee. After a night of finding places to eat... and talking in a poorly lit restaurante eating fresh fries and completos... we just hung out. and chilled. and talked about life and its complexities. Ah good times.

Pulling out mr. Lonely Planet, we came to an acuerdo that we both wanted to go to Baños Morales. So we asked the hostel lady about it.. and from what we gathered only one bus left from Santiago to the place... early in the morning, so we'd have to try to catch it. We woke up nice and early and stood at the corner asking nearly every micro that came by if it was "the one". We got a bit confused asking a bunch of random mountaneery-looking people because some had told us that the bus left already and passed, other said it was still coming, others advised us to hitch a ride with a private van that took people to Morales. After some nasty coffee and a jamon-queso sandwhich, we gathered and packed our fears of looking stupid (because we knew how unknowledgable we were) and asked the chofer if there were open spots to this place called "Baños". And thank the Lord there was. And off we went. And the road was bumpy and absolutely beautiful.

We jumped off and found ourselves surrounded in a tiny pueblo situated at the foot of the majestic peaks draped in blankets of white snow, whose population we discovered later on was 11 people. The other vistors were all people geared up in snow pants, huge backpacks with ropes, crampons, gaiters, ice axes, hiking poles, and the whole deal, getting ready to go mountainismoing. We, on the otherhand, had our gnarly one pair of bluejeans, running shoes, ghetto sleeping bags, and no palos (sticks) to hike with. "O well." We found Refugio Chicos Malos, hosted by a cheery lady with an extremely motherly personality. Her name was Isabel. She gladly made us comfortable, gave us beta about the hikes, lent us sweeet bamboo ski poles, and to Christy, a camo viser.

We stuffed my backpack with things we thought we'd need for the hike to El Monumento El Morado (whatever that was.. I don't think I know still.) Made our way towards the signs... ran into a mountain-marathon racing event... signed in the green house with the mr. CONAF ranger.. and subimos. Pretty much it was breathtaking. We were definitely not prepared for the hike, but we still went up. We met a ton of friendly mountaneeres and hard-core hiker people on the way up. I know people stared at us .. a strange sight we were indeed: us in our blue-jeans (while literally everyone else was in some form of water-proof pants, gaiters, and at LEAST hiking boots), sneakers, spiffy old bamboo ski pole, and one person carrying a lumpy pack of food, water, and a ghetto JUMBO sleeping bag. Our shoes of course started getting wet.. but we refused to backdown. The snow was getting pretty deep. Many times Christy and I fell through snow that went up to our shins and knees. At one point we found ourselves following, in a line formation, a group of mountaineeres who were trudging along with all their equipment to stay the night. A couple of hours later, we hit a level part of the mountain, a place were all the hard-corees were setting up their tents. We decided that we'd stop there too. We amaturely rolled our my ghetto sleeping bag onto a patch of dry dirt, pulled out some snacks, and just sat, marveling at God's creation before us.

Came down. Ate dinner. Delicious cazuela (the soup), and Christy's arroz con pollito. RICO. Since we were the only ones staying at the refugio, we pretty much hung out with them. A few of Isabel's friends stopped by. They taught us a few card games (vienteseis!), we had tecito, I learned to secrets of empanada making (theoretically), watched TV, and just talked a bit while having a DROP (literally) of manzanilla-flavored liquor. We met some caballeros, one Chilean-Australian and 2 Santiaguinos, who were UFO investigators. No joke. They showed us fotos of UFO ships they had taken. (go to http://galaxiaorion.blogspot.com/)
They said that they were true believers, and ever since they were kids they had been ufo hunting. They had "encounter stories" but didn't want to share them with us for fear of scaring us before we went to sleep.

Nos acostamos..actually, we HAD to sleep because the lights cut out at midnight... and slept in a bit. Woke up to the sun beaming on our faces.. the weather was warm enough to wear a short-sleeve t-shirt. We just took our time... having nothing planned to do except soak in the baños. Spent time outside having a late breakfast. There we met Balter, a lawyer/ ex-detective, Pablito-cute kid, and Pablito's dad. They were doing a day hike, and Pablo and his dad ended up going on the same returning van as us. They went off to subir the monte .. and we decided to walk around a bit before the piscina mineral.

Baño time! (baño=bath.. not toilet necessarily). It looked like spinach and carrot soup in a massive hole. HAha. But we were there anyways so we decided to dip in. It supposedly has minerals that are good for you. And it wasn't really that warm. (about 73 degrees). But it was nice.. and the sun was out. So after dipping in and swimming around for a while, we soaked some sun.

After a nice dip, we had lunch, packed up... and lounged around until 5. we ended up going in the same van we came in... (and also last-minutely asking if there was space in the van for us-- another Praise God moment because if there wasn't space I don't know how we would have gotten back... ) and off we went.. regresando a Santiago, where the aire dulce bloomed.

"Good night moon"