Chillan

We left Rancagua on Friday and had a really nice bus ride down to Chillan. Busses here work very nicely. You reserve the seat you want. They leave on time. You can order meals on board. There´s a bathroom. The bus is speed controlled to 60 mph and the drivers´drive time is limited to five hours. They have got things figured out here.

Chillan was not the most interesting town. It´s been levelled repeatedly by earthquakes, but we found a nice little room and the tourist info center and had some OK meals.

On Saturday we took a big bus up to Termas de Chillan, one of Chile´s major ski resorts. Chillan is at just 100 feet above sea level, and the valley was cloaked in fog. As we rose up the skies parted to reveal brillian and deep blue. The road climbed past villages and into foothills and through a deep canyon and then up a mountainside and past a checkpoint where men were installing chains on tires. We got to the base area at 10 am.

The base has a t-bar and a chair. The chair leads to a midmountain areas with a beginners poma and chair and two longer chairs, one of which goes to the summit and the other of which goes leads to more chairs and pomas and tbars. At the windy summit it feels like you can reach out and touch two volcanoes, one of which is smoldering and smoking. To the south stands and chain of mountains and volcanoes. The skiing is through channels cut into the volcanic rock and along wide open slopes well above treeline. Though a few clouds popped along in the afternoon it warmed up to freezing at the base and we had a sunny lunch as icicles dripped around us. We spent the rest of the day on the summit before descending when the lifts closed at 5 pm. What an incredible day!