De vuelta.

So after five years, I finally got to go back to Chile! The massive, gorgeous mountains are still there, surrounding Santiago on all sides, but the endless lines of sun-yellow, eternally speeding public buses are not! The view is still spectacular from on top of Cerro San Cristobal, and it includes views of new buildings and skyscrapers under construction. There is an underground highway and an underground museum at La Moneda, the presidential building. And although their lives have changed in lots of ways, the friends that I saw are still as charming and fun as ever.

Brian and I visited Santiago and Valparaiso-Vina del Mar last week, and I did my best to give him an idea of my time there. Along the way, we caught up with lots of people, sights, and transportation systems. We saw Ingrid, Carlos, Cristobal, and Cristian, my hilarious host family. They're doing well, were as welcoming as they always were, and the kids are three times as tall. They entertained the crap out of Brian, as they always did for me when I lived there...

Brian, Ingrid, Carlos, Margaret

We also hung out with my good friend Felipe, who took us out, showed us the sights and helped to bring back my Chilean Spanish.

La Marmota y Feliponcio

And we went to the coast, thankfully finding space in the coolest hostel ever after I sortofkindof forgot to make a reservation until the day we got there. We stayed up in the hills:

Hills (interior)

and took the ascensor (ancient rickety wooden elevator, capacity seven, that rumbles you to the top of a huge hill) to the top of a second hill where we had dinner overlooking the port.

Hills (exterior)

We went to the beach in Vina and got pooped on by a bird flying about 10,000 feet above us (imagine the velocity!).


We marveled at the beautiful, sunny weather. We took photos.

Back in Santiago, Felipe accompanied us on a sort of walking tour of the places where I spent the most time, and later we were driven at amazing speeds around the hills outside of Santiago by Brian's law school friend Rodrigo. We forgot to take a picture of him, sorry!

It was a whirlwind of course (revisiting a place you knew so well after five years has to be), but it was lovely. "Super," as the chilenos would say. And we came back just in time to get ready for my mom's visit! Yaaaay, mom!