When surrounded by mountains in the middle of winter, this clan goes skiing. I had no interest in hauling our gear, so I booked gear rental and transport from a company called SkiTotal which worked out perfectly. Amusingly, the conversions navigating from the Imperial to metric systems were harder than navigating the rest of the ski gear rental in a language I barely speak, but we got it all done.
Getting to El Colorado is an adventure. It sits 8000 feet above Santiago, so the road consists of over 40 switchbacks snaking along the mountainside. It reminded me a bit of driving along the Amalfi coast in Italy, except with much better (less suicidal) drivers and more horses.
I was expecting super steep runs and a million people, and I was pleasantly wrong on both accounts. It was delightfully uncrowded, and lift lines were almost non-existent. El Colorado is considered the easier of the main city-side ski resorts, and we found it to be pleasantly in our skill set. That is, the main area was – they also have an Olympic area which we suspected was likely just a tad outside our intermediate range. 🙂
Trees. New England skiing is effectively skiing through dense forest, but at nearly 10,000 feet in elevation, there are no trees in the Andes. Each wide open vista took my breath away.
After a great day of skiing and a solid nap on the shuttle ride back to town, we grabbed a quick dinner of traditional Chilean sandwiches (thumbs up all around) and then grabbed an Uber to our hotel. Since the flight on Sunday is early, we booked a room at the airport Holiday Inn. It’s a generic hotel, except for the moat. Seriously.
Vacation Days 