Portillo
CHILE
Spring Ski Portillo
By LYNDI
Saturday, September 4, 2010
It was a bulk email sent to all Tucan employees on a rainy January afternoon in what now seems like eons ago. “Ski for a week in Chile – all-inclusive resort starting at US$650!”. And that was all it took. Aaron informed me that while I was starting my last tour with Tucan Travel in Peru, he would be skiing on fresh powder during Ski Portillo’s promotional spring skiing week in early September. And then fortune found me – my boss Zac informed me that the first part of my last tour in early September had been cancelled. I was free. Free to ski.
And so. Aaron and I booked a week’s skiing for an outrageous price waaaay back in April. And this was a week to celebrate for a few reasons: 1) we’re skiing. Duh. 2) it finally marked the end of our nearly 2 year long distance relationship. We were going on vacation together.
Early on Saturday morning, September 4th, Aaron and I headed to the bus terminal in Santiago and bargained a ticket to Portillo in a minivan headed to Mendoza. Avoiding the companies that were trying to sell you tickets for 20,000 pesos even though their signs read 12,000, Aaron eventually found tickets for 9,000 Chilean pesos to Portillo (about US$18). Barring the fact that our driver got hopelessly lost and we ended up in suburbia Santiago, we eventually made our way to the long awaited resort of Ski Portillo.
We arrived around 3pm and spent our first day exploring the resort’s many amenities, including a cinema with 2 movies daily, a gym, outdoor jacuzzis, several bars and lounges and a game room with a basketball court and ping pong tables. We were pretty impressed with the entire place… except our rooms. In the Inca Lodge that we had booked, there are single-sex 4 bed dorms that could comfortably sleep one. The fact that they fit four grown adults and luggage into these rooms was truly quite extraordinary. Hence, the great price.
But on Day 2 – we were at the rentals at 7:50am so that we could be first on the slopes when they opened at 8. So it was a really cool that they actually didn’t open until 9. But THEN we were first on the slopes.
What we didn’t realize is that thanks to our good friend El Niño, the snow was the lowest it had been in decades – no new snow in over a week. So at 9am before the sun has had time to soften it, we did a few runs on pure ice. Luckily, around 10:30am or so, the snow was a lot softer and we could finally carve our way down instead of slide down.
So it didn’t take us long to establish a week long regimen. Breakfast at 9:30am, get on the slopes around 10 or 10:30am, lunch around 1pm, then ski until 3:30pm or 4. Hit the gym for some necessary stretching afterwards (I could barely move on Day 2 due to neglecting this important step), jacuzzis for an hour, ping pong, and dinner. Sometimes we mixed it up with a game of PIG (well, Aaron played PIG, I played HIPPOPOTAMUS), happy hour or post dinner drinks. A bar called La Posada across the way from the resort was a haven of cheap beers and $4 bottles of wine (compared to the same bottle selling for $12 at the resort).
Saturday the 11th came all too quickly. After 5 days of skiing, one much needed day off relaxing, new friends made, and quickly deteriorating snow, we said our sad goodbyes to an amazing week of a ski holiday. Even though the snow wasn’t that good and we had to avoid rocks at the bottom of some lifts, Aaron and I got to spend quality time together for the first time in nearly 2 years, we got some great runs in, and had a fantastic time. And the best part is… this was only the beginning of our travels together.
