Blown off a Mountain

So, this is basically a tourism trip now and most of the tourism down here revolves around the land(i.e. the Andes mountains). And South America is FULL of beautiful landscapes. I´ll post some pictures in a moment. Of course they don´t mention in the guidebooks that the Andes mountains are fairly tall and very steep. And all of our guides are apparently part mountain goat because they mention oh, this walk (it´s not a walk, it´s a hike) is very easy. This right before they head up a ninety degree slope (I don´t even want to try to do the degree sign on this seriously annoying spanish keyboard.)

So the first day I do a hike with my sister. It goes up for about 30 minutes at about 45 degrees. According to the guidebook we went up about 350 meters. The hardest part about it was that in the U.S., at least in the Rockies, they have significant switchbacks where you are zigzagging up the trail. So the uphill is not as steep even though it makes the hike longer. Now here, they believe that the shortest distance is a straight line. After we get up the treacherous uphill, then we get to the crazy part. We´re on the side of a mountain and the wind is whipping past us at crazy speeds. It actually blew me up the last part of the mountain trail. The wind did all of the hard work. That part was great. Unfortunately the same wind is throwing gravel at our backs and IT HURTS!! We can´t turn around or we´ll be blinded, the guide is somewhere bouncing around off the trail trying to make sure no one´s fallen over the ledge-I was like this is crazy. We have these walking sticks (aka ski poles) and we have them wedged into the ground in front of us to brace ourselves to keep from being blown off the mountain. Finally our guide returns to shout in each person´s ear that we need to crawl to safety. After crawling oh, about 150 yards, we manage to get where there is a ridge protecting us from the wind. There is this little tiny 100 pound Brazilian lady that had to hitch a ride latched onto her husband because she was almost blown away. Final tally--hats lost (in our group of 8)= 3; sunglasses lost = 1. Jacket ripped off (it turned into a sail) from a guy from Santiago = 1. Falls into this insane plant called mother-in-law bush (get it-because it´s full of sharp spines??!) = countless. (Actually the mother in law bush smells like a type of rosemary as I found out while picking 15 spines out of my hands). We were all crying in relief when we made it down. And of course it started raining on the way down. But we survived. This country is totally wild. There is NOTHING in the U.S. like it. Here´s some pictures.