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.
So Monday afternoon we made sure we finished work early, packed our backpacks with camera, tents, sleeping bags, tomatoes, nice bread, hummus, baba ganoush, some nectarines and some chirimoya (as well as water, and some breakfast bars) and made our way to the mountains with the dogs. The plan was to see the supermoon as it rose above the Andes. Originally, we had planned to go to Laguna Piuquenes (above La Parva), but quite big clouds had accumulated during the afternoon up there, so we settled for a spot on the way to
Cerro Conchali and
Carpa, which is closer to Santiago and not as high up.
Food always tastes a lot better in nature and even better at the top of a hill so we had some dinner and patiently (not easy for some ;o)) waited for the moon to make an appearance... and it really did not disappoint (click on below photos to open a higher resolution version in a new tab)!
The next morning, as we were pondering going back down the hill and back to work, we decided to go on a "little walk" first... 4h later, we were at the top of Cerro La Carpa. The walk up is beautiful as the high Andes are visible after the first bit of climb. Just below the top of La Carpa we also found a patch of snow which hadn't completely melted in the early summer sun, yet, which was great news for us and eagerly utilised to replenish our dwindling water reserves. We hadn't quite planned to stay all day, after all.
Fauna wise, we saw condors, quite a few newly molted
Chilean rose tarantulas or "pollito" spiders and plenty of
lizards.
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El Plomo from the top of Cerro Carpa
Apart from that, we didn't see another human being all day until we got back to car. That's the beauty of going for a hike near Santiago mid-week q-:
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Espectacular
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