Hiking Up Cerro San Cristobal

Here in Chile, they have a much different idea of what a hill is and what a mountain is.  Last Saturday, we walked up Cerro San Cristobal, which is considered a hill.  It is about 1000 ft higher than the rest of Santiago, and about 2900 ft above sea level.  This is what it looks like from the ground in a park near our hostel. (Sorry about the sun.  It is apparently the only picture I have that shows how tall the hill is.)

It was really pretty, because the hill is a park, so there's zoo at the bottom and the path up to the top is forested. There's a giant statue of Mary at the top, which can be seen all around the city.

Right below the statue

The climb up was nice, until we looked around and saw the blanket of smog over the city, and the path was really steep.  I kept expecting it to level out after the next turn, but it didn't.  There were lots of breaks for pictures, so it wasn't too tiring.

About halfway to the top

The park near my hostel from the top of Cerro San Cristobal

Going Down

Afterwards, we got lunch and a few of us went to an artisan fair near the hill.  It was more expensive than the other fair we had been to, so all I got was a homemade alfajor, which is a cookie sandwich with manjar (a caramelized milk candy, similar to dulce de leche) in the middle, and dipped in chocolate.  They're great, and this was the best one I've had so far.  That night, one of the girls made avocado smoothies, which taste much, much better than they sound, probably due to the sugar and condensed milk used in the recipe.

Sunset last Saturday.

Sunday, we ran around the city pretty much nonstop.  We went to an English speaking church in the morning.  The people were really nice, but there wasn't a sermon, just skits about Pentecost.  While talking after the service, I met a man who had gone to the University of Cincinnati and had spent lots of time with friends in Oxford, which was weird, but cool to talk about home for a while.

Horse-bee

After lunch, we went to a meeting for the International Day of Prayer at the courtyard on Cerro Santa Lucia.  It was really cool to have people from all around the city come to pray for the same things, even if I didn't understand all of it.  Once that ended, a bunch of the Chileans we know who had come stayed to play games with us.  I wandered around taking pictures of the scenery, which wasn't great because of the smog, but better than usual.

Then, we went to out to dinner to meet one of the sponsors of Campus Crusade here.  He owns three restaurants in the city, and we were taken to his sushi place, which made me really happy.  He provided tons of sushi for us, as well as gyosa.  Most of the others preferred the rolls, especially the more elaborate ones, leaving all of the sashimi, which I was really happy about.  All in all, it was a great weekend.