Cerro la Carpa and the supermoon

This November's full moon was special: it was supermoon. A supermoon is a new or full moon closely coinciding with perigee (the moon’s closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit). It was also the closest a full moon has been to the earth since 1948 and it will not be as close to Earth until November 2034. It seemed like an excellent opportunity to celebrate and treat ourselves to a little adventure quality time out of the city, which was particularly needed as we had just worked through the entire weekend to meet a deadline.

Calbuco - 19 months on

Last year, Volcán Calbuco in the Los Lagos Region of Chile (about 1000 km south of Santiago, near the city of Puerto Montt) erupted in a spectacular manner. 210 million cubic metres of crushed rock of different sizes were spit as "ash" into the atmosphere, then blown some distance by the wind, before being deposited on the surrounding land.

Paraty, Brazil

A conference took us to Brazil last month… and what better thing to do than to take a couple of days off and enjoy what Brazil has to offer: lovely tropical fruit, beaches and enjoying a new place and language.

Winter activities: Termas, Snowboarding and Patagonia

Work kept us fairly busy the last few months and it is time for a quick catch-up post to document what we have been up to this winter to escape the city every now and then:

Chewy chocolate chip cookies and cashew milk - Winter is coming! ;)

We have had a few slightly colder days recently and a lot less sun that we are used to. So, here is a 15min chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe to make it all better!

Dubai

It has been a busy few weeks! We had the opportunity to go to Dubai to present at a solar workshop last month. The trip was exciting. If nothing else for the big contrasts that one finds in a place like Dubai.

Cerro el Plomo 5434m asl

Believe it or not, we still have a fairly decent "to-do" list of adventures in Chile. One of the items that had been there (and in real life looking right back at us most days) is Cerro el Plomo. Despite being called "cerro", which in Spanish means "small mountain", this is the biggest mountain around the Santiago area and it stands proudly at 5434 above sea level. It can be seen from most places in Santiago (pollution allowing) and back in the Inca days it had an "Apu" status: The incas believed that the biggest mountains had a spirit/god.

Who´s eating who?

We are in the middle of the summer now and from previous years we remember that this is the time when the spiders and other creepy crawlers that we share our house with are most active. This morning we found the outcome of what looked like an epic struggle on the wall next to the washing machine, just outside the kitchen door (WARNING: contains images that some of you may find unpleasant)...

Paso El León

Just like in previous years, we left Santiago behind for the end-of-the-year holiday season and went "down south". Christian's brother and his family were visiting Chile around that time, so after a weekend spent together in Santiago in mid-December, and then sending them off to Punta Arenas for some whale-watching and Torres-del-Paine-exploring, we had arranged to meet up again in the Puerto Varas area just before Christmas. We had hired a cabin for a few days, air fares (for our visitors) and bus tickets (for us) were all booked... except, this is Chile and things don't always go as planned.

A few days in Los Rios

It is not the first time we spend a few days in Los Rios, either for some Termas and a bit of forest, or to climb a volcano. This time though, we also had some company, as some of Patricia's family came to visit.