Chile Day 2: Skiing in the Andes!

We woke up early Tuesday and took the subway to this rental/transportation/gear place called SkiTotal (on the helpful recommendation of my friend Whitney who studied abroad in Chile). There we rented all of our stuff, including pants, jackets, etc. because we had absolutely nothing. It worked out great, except for I accidentally got one medium and on XL glove. We rode up to the resort El Colorado in a van, and the roads were incredibly steep and scary. It took about an hour and a half, and it was snowing pretty heavily at the top. As soon as I saw the runs I knew it was going to be wayyy different than skiing in the U.P./Sunburst. I have never been out to Colorado or anything and have only really skied a couple times in my life. The runs were straight down, no curving and no trees. I have never really mastered stopping/turning on naturally winding and slow runs, so the first part of the day was a bit rough for me. Actually it was terrifying and I felt like I was going to fly off the side of the mountain (see pictures ha). Hanna snowboarded, and she is quite good, but she coached me down the first couple of times thank god. I only ended up doing 2 green runs the whole day, but they were super long and so different than what I'd ever skied I figured it was okay. We rode the chairlift and also a T-bar lift, which was different. There were these ski school groups of intense little 7 yr. olds skiing circles around me and cutting in line, so that was fun. Later in the day they closed some of the higher runs because it was snowing so hard, and eventually it turned to near white-out conditions even on our runs. You couldn't tell the difference between the sky and the snow or see any holes or bumps, plus wearing goggles was a bit disembodying. Also it was easy to accidentally ski into deep snow or over into another run because there were no natural barriers. The ride home was also terrifying. It took almost 2 and a half hours, and involved passing through snow, hail, and rain, all on icy roads. There was just this long train of vehicles with their flashers on winding down this steep, guardrail-less tiny road. After we returned all of our gear we stumbled into this little strip mall restaurant called Fuente Chileno, only because we saw it had heaters. It ended up being amazing. We got these hamburger-like things with avocado and homemade mayo that tasted like sour cream. We also shared fries and a shrimp/cheese empanada, and I tried an artesenal beer. The skiing was a great experience, and the scenery was stunning, but the actual going down the runs was stressful and not as fun. I like having trees. Although we did basically have the mountain entirely to ourselves, and one of my biggest worries skiing at home is running into little kids falling and swerving all over the place.