Monumento natural El Morado

Monday it was back to Santiago with a rather annoying stop at the Brazilian Embassy who seemed to not want to be bothered to do their bloody job.. the lady was like.. ¨get your visa in Bolivia¨ .. i lied and said we were not going to La Paz.. lazy bitch! then we took the metro to the end of the line and a collectivo (well basically a taxi i guess) out to San Alfonso in the Cajon del Maipo to a place called Cascada de los Animas.. a nature reserve that offers hiking, horse riding, rafting and other fun activities.. we settled into our super quaint cabina and were stoked at the prospect of a good kitchen to use for a few days.. yes sad to say but eating out all the time gets old.. especially like in the case when it took 1hr to get our food one day.. hmm.. although i don´t miss doing the dishes that is for sure.. heather really got into the swing of it and crafted some culinary delights with the limited produce and food at the local tienda (shop).. that was really nothing more than a corner store.. we hiked to the waterfalls on the property and went horse riding.. our first attempt to get out to monumento natural el morado got foiled in San Gabriel.. we took the collectivo to the end of the line and got stranded basically.. well we got a bus back to our cabina and decided to try another approach.. which was to pay a collectivo to take us ALL the way.. about 1hr on dirt roads.. so thursday we did the drive out and hiked up to Glacier San Francisco.. stopping at Laguna el Morado enroute.. it was a nice 5hr hike not too hard but just amazing scenery and not many other people around.. it´s funny Conaf (their national park system) rangers give you the full scoop on the hike in Spanish.. both here and in Pucon I only got about 1/2 the scoop but managed to not get lost.. too bad if you didn´t know any spanish at all you´d probably end up lost or worse..

We took a Collectivo taxi all the way out to Monumento El Morado and did the 5 hr hike up to Glacier San francisco.. there was not many people on the trail and it was a really nice day to be out in the mountians..