A South American Quick Hit

Written by Adam

Friday, 16 October 2009

Some times the best plan is no plan. Tim and I were heading to South America, but less than 24 hours before we met in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport on our way to Santiago, the only thing we both knew for sure was what day we had to be back in Santiago to fly out. In between our arrival and departure two weeks later there was a big question mark. Where would we go? Who was where? Where was the snow? Was there any snow? Even though we had all of our ski gear with us, the question of “surf trip or ski trip?” did come up more than once. Once we got to Santiago we checked the snow conditions. Locally, people were getting powder up high but unless we had access to a heli (which we didn’t), it seemed like the best option was self-propelled action starting as high as we could. That meant getting on a bus and enjoying a scenic drive east through the Andes and eventually Las Leñas. The bus ride from Santiago to Mendoza to Las Leñas takes the better part of a day. We arrived in Las Leñas just after sunrise, which gave us plenty of time to move in, get changed, and head up to the Marte chair, which had made a miraculous recovery from a seemingly terminal mid-season maintenance issue. Making the switch from summer to winter in a day is a trip; approximately 48 hours before our first run I had been surfing in California. We enjoyed smooth and fast turns off of Marte for a few days, but eventually the wind decided to shut the chair down and blow the good snow away. Such is life in Las Leñas! Still, with a bit of effort the goods are still out there. Eventually the winds stopped and Marte opened up again. Unfortunately the winds had transformed the steep south faces from smooth fast grippy snow to “congelado arrecife”, but the sun was transforming every other aspect into perfect corn. We were able to link up some of the long runs right off the chair that Las Leñas is famous for, with an occasional lap through the park on the way back to Marte. Skiing these long laps builds up quite an appetite, and there is no better way to refuel after a solid day of skiing than an asado. These family-style affairs seemed to happen on a regular basis; our upstairs neighbors hosted one on our 2nd day, our next door neighbors hosted one on our 4th day, our other next door neighbors hosted one on day 7, (P.)F.W.T. veteran Tato Vasiuk and friends hosted a nice one in Los Molles a few days after that, and Jose, Tim, and I hosted one on our last evening. In addition to many kilos of meat, these events involve copious amounts of malbec, Quilmes, and fernet, which usually leads to going out to the club, so all in all the recharging qualities of an asado may not be as wholesome as they could be. In any event they’re great fun and we were on a corn cycle schedule anyways. Dawn patrol what? Two weeks is a quick trip anywhere and it was time for us to leave sooner than we would have liked. In order to minimize our time in transit we decided to pony up for the flight from Mendoza to Santiago, which allowed us a few hours to explore Santiago before we flew home. Santiago is an interesting city but there’s far too much to see in such a short time, especially since the fish market can easily take hours to explore. After ogling sketchy looking fish for hours, we barely had time for a few pisco sours before we had to catch our flights home and catch the last bit of summer. Once again, 48 hours after making our last turns in Argentina I was back at the beach getting shacked. I thought for sure that I’d have a couple of months to wait before our winter got started, but snow has been falling all over the west and the first reports of northern hemisphere turns are starting to filter in. I can live with this.