My birthday

Do you know this phenomenon that if you're really busy (for example because you have to hand in an essay the next day and you haven't even started writing it), you always feel the need to do thinks you haven't done for months? ... Well, so here are some pictures of my birthday party in a really nice club in Santiago, where they played some gooooood music (in one of the rooms, there was a Joy Division special! ;-) )

Montanismo - Der Berg ruft!

As my psychology courses here are not really soooo interesting, I decided to focus a bit more on my sports couses, which are a lot of fun.
Here are some pics from the last 3 trips into the mountains...


One of the first things I had to learn was that the top you want to reach is never the top which you can see. It's always behind.... So it's a little bit frustrating if you finally reach the top and then a much higher mountain appears behind it. For example the hill you can see here was only one of the hills on the way to the "top of the day"...


This was my team for the first trip. The first trip was actually a bit more playing in the hills than real hiking...







On the second trip then, we had a wonderful view on...

...nothing! -Right! It's not that my camera wasn't working, no the picture is all gray/brown because it's Santiago! ... and smog season is just beginning... yeah, actually I don't want to think about the fact that I'm living in this pollution every day, but my lungs and eyes remind me of it every day.




...after a short break we went on to the "top of the day"...



3rd trip - 3 People - 3 days

On our third trip we started climbing the first hill on friday evening. It was already dark when we left, packed with tents, sleeping-bags and warm socks for cold nights, so I was happy that at least my team members had thought of torches. So, thanks to Gustavo and Josephine!



Thanks to a lot of festivals I am already used to sleeping in a tent, but still I couldn't sleep for a minute during the first night. The problem: I had a cold and couldn't catch breath because my nose was stuffed and I had a sore throat. So, the next morning when we left (at 5 a.m.!!!) I was even more tired than before!

And after all, this was the hardest day of the trip, nothing but hiking from dusk till dawn...





But at least I got rewarded with some beautiful and impressive views!


Finally, we were high above the smog where only some fog and tender clouds wrapped around the top of the mountains and the whole landscape changed into a mystical fairy tale...


The climate is so rough up there, that the only animals we encountered were some curious eagles (probably hoping we would share our lunch with them).





Well ok, on the way down we came across some horses, but hosestly I still don't have a clue how they managed to get up there...





Reaching the top, ERNESTO, our leader (some people might also call him Jesus, Che or the southamerican Reinhold Messner) hold a quite impressive speech about the significance of reaching a top and why people leave their warm and save houses to climb a mountain, where at the top noone will be waiting for you to give you food, money or applause and that it's just the mind which brings you to the top because your body starts already to complain after the first kilometers...
Since he already climbed the Aconcagua (highest mountain in South America, 6.962m) and the Mount Everest WITHOUT supplementary oxygen, I think he knows what he is talking about.





This is a resort camp... for people who plan to stay longer/go further... We had our descend the same day.




It was a really nice experience, but next time hopefully without a cold!