Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Hola from Chile

This is my first trip to South America and I am really enjoying Chile, the people are all very friendly and Santiago is situated in a beautiful location. I spent two days in Santiago touring the city and a day trip to the mountains - for some secret altitude training! Santiago is based in a valley surrounded by mountains it is a quite arid region with only 10 days of rain a year. The city is quite warm getting up to 30C during the day but cooling down quickly overnight.

My Spanish is very bad consisting of greetings and counting to ten, luckily for me many people speak better english than my spanish and I have managed to get along nicely - sign language is very helpful - pointing and smiling. I found it very interesting to see a mime artist performing in front of cars at an intersection - sometimes you don`t need the words.

I am now in Punta Arenas my final stop before Antarctica - I have already met a few of my fellow competitors. In fact some of them spotted me - they had seen my alice 2 antarctica website. There are some runners with excellent running and endurance sports pedigrees, just check out the list of competitors.

I took a mini tour around town, it is a small town which is quite windswept and exposed to the elements. The houses are all small (helps with heating during winter) and many of the houses are brightly painted - the ones I like have bright red roofs - I guess it helps finding them in the snow! The town is located right on the ocean and in fact my hotel room faces the beach which is lovely, today it is 15C and sunshine.

2 comments:

  1. Wow Sharyn, what an experience this whole journey is for you! We'll drink a toast at the CR Melbourne drinks next Friday - best wishes and may the running gods smile on you :)

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  2. Hi Sharyn, I'm thinking of you and wishing you all the best for your Antarctica marathon. Look forward to hearing how it goes.

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