Volcán Villarica

Well looks like we've been too busy to write blog posts again lately... We had our first family visitors from Europe, our little veggie garden is coming along nicely thanks to a couple of weekends of efforts we dedicated to it, and we climbed our first volcano!

La vida (y la muerte) en la jungla del trafico

(This is a Spanish version of a previous post due to popular demand :o))

Parece ser que 608 peatones murieron como resultado de ser atropellados y más de 8000 sufrieron lesiones en las calles de Santiago en el 2011 (ver cifras de la CONASET). Hace tan solo unos meses que Christian fue testigo de como alguien que cruzaba por un paso peatonal con semaforo en  Avenida Manquehue fue atropellado por un auto que giraba mientras la luz seguía en verde para los peatones. El conductor no lo vio, estaba distraído o quien sabe que… En Santiago los accidentes pasan a menudo y aqui les dejamos un enlace que mapea los puntos más concurridos de accidentes.

Santiago air (again, sorry...)

We could help but posting this quickly: Today Christian received a replacement filter for his bicycle mask (they have to be mail-ordered from abroad). We mentioned a few weeks ago that we started using them in our attempts to deal with the filthy air in this city (see our post in August).

Spring has sprung - mountain biking, trekking, cooking and gardening

September is the month when spring arrives in Santiago and one can noticeably feel it. The trees blossom, the temperature goes up and stays in the twenty plus during the day quite often. The 18th and 19th of September are national holidays (link in English here) which means that often (when they fall on any other day but Saturday or Sunday) most people get a little break.