Sunday, October 14, 2007 Sandboarding in San Pedro

Sunday, October 14, 2007 Sandboarding

I slept in till 10:00 am and Natalie and Sam and I headed into town to go to church which we thought started at 11:00 am. But it didn’t start till noon, so we spent the hour trying to buy our bus tickets back to Santiago. The tickets for Sunday were all sold out, which meant the 3 of us who hadn’t bought tickets home had to stay an extra day. But I didn’t have class on Tuesday and had been hoping to stay, so I didn’t mind at all! We also watched a German movie being filmed in the plaza! For a town of only 4,000 people we were amazed to see the big production. We found out later that it is called Honeymoon in Chile (but in German) and I really hope I get to see it! We went to mass at noon and the church was absolutely packed, about half of us obviously tourists.

After mass there was a Mexican dancing group that performed in the plaza. We watched for a while then headed back to the hostel to get ready for our Sand boarding trip! Only 4 of us ended up going since Courtney was still feeling a little ill and now Calli was throwing up. But Sam, CJ, Will and I spent the afternoon climbing up a huge sand dune, waxing up our sand boards, then sliding/falling/embarrassing ourselves all the way down the hill! The sand board is basically a smaller, little thinner snowboard and the idea is to go down basically like snowboarding. But its a lot harder because the sand breaks you instead of snow which accelerates you. So you have to stay lean really far back on the board and try and turn, which is nearly impossible. After about an hour we figured it out enough to go down the hill in a single diagonal instead of zigzagging like you are supposed to. I definitely wasn’t very good at it but descent enough to enjoy myself. It was a great workout and I’m glad we tried it. Plus it was a good step for me to “get back on the horse” after breaking my wrist snowboarding. I was really nervous at first but felt more comfortable by the end.

When we got back from snowboarding I took a well needed shower then said goodbye to all the girls that were leaving. They had class Tuesday so needed all day tomorrow (which is a holiday) to get back to Santiago. So I was left with CJ, Calli’s brother, and Will, another friend in my program. They are great guys and we had fun hanging out and it was only a little weird being the only girl. For dinner we met up with Andy and Taylor and again afterwards came back to the hostel and hung out. Andy and Taylor went back around midnight because they hadn’t slept at all the night before (hanging out with us than going to the geysers) and they had to catch a flight early in the morning.