La Campana

I am sitting here on the balcony of our apartment on a not rainy day, looking out into the ocean.  There are about 15 sea lions playing in the water.  This may be due to the (fishing?) boats that are hanging out.  

I wanted to tell everyone about the adventure we had last Sunday when we went to La Campana.  We took a train and a bus to get to this national park that is about half way between Valparaiso and Santiago.  It was amazing how 

much the scenery changed during our trip from Vina to the park, a total of about 1.5 hours.  We went from busy city to beautiful mountainous park land.

The claim to fame for this park is that it contains a mountain that Charles Darwin climbed when he was here in August of 1834.  Darwin noted in his journal that the view from this mountain was one of the highlights of his journey.

We did not get a really early start to the day so we could not climb to the top, about a 4 hour trip.  The weather also did not overly cooperate and it was a bit drizzly.  We decided to take a walk anyway and it was a great experience.  We make about a 3 mile loop (not like the 3 mile loop around Lake Nokomis, as half of this trip was up hill!).  The

 scenery was great.

One thing I noticed was the fantastic foliage around us.  This was the first time I had ever seen cacti and broad leaf trees all living in the same area.

After our hike we stopped at a restaurant by the train station to get some dinner.  When we walked in the place was hopping - a soccer game was on tv.  The popular Chillean Colo Colo team was playing.  It was fun to watch a game in a room filled with people so involved.  Unfortunately Colo Colo lost the game.