Pre-Chillan

Hotel Plaza San Francisco somehow thought that our reservation was for Saturday night when we arrived on Friday. Since our voucher clearly stated the Friday night, we still got a room, but not until after a slight scare that I had messed up the days.

We had planned to do laundry that evening and had asked ahead about self-service laundromats near the hotel. The concierge gave us a location and we walked to it, only to find out that they didn't have self service (despite what their web page said). They pointed us to another place, which also didn't have self service, but here the folks were very very very kind, and did an express job for us. They took all the stress out from us. We are so very appreciative to them.

No issues getting to the train station, except we forgot to check out of the hotel. The train is quite nice. I also forgot that we would be traveling over lunch and didn't pick up anything. The train has a food service, but of course there is absolutely nothing that is gluten free. I am surviving on potato chips!

From the looks of it, pretty much the entire 38 seats of Preferente class is used up by skiers going to Nevados de Chillan. There is over three feet of snow in the forecast, but also the forecast calls for some high winds, so it is unlikely that the upper lifts will be open much. However, when they do, it could be great!

The bus ride to the resort was interesting. The bus had chains on, but at one point up the (very snowy) road to Nevados de Chillan, a car tried to get past us on the way down and apparently hit us. It was not a major accident, but we had to stop for a while as the car got past us. When we started up again, perhaps due the length of time that we had been in the same place, or maybe it was just a bad area of the road, the bus slid into the ditch. We had to change busses (a new one appeared amazingly fast). They dug our bus out and brought our bags only a few minutes later.

But, on a plus side - it is dumping here! Now we just have to hope that the upper mountain lifts get opened soon to enjoy some of this powder. More pics from the resort in the next post...