When I told friends and family that I’d just bought a plane ticket to Chile I usually got the same response every time… “Chile? As in South America?…that’s a little random…”

Welllll, it would’ve been a little random had my boyfriend not been living there for several months beforehand. He received an internship in Santiago with the US Embassy and so naturally that was my green light to book our first adventure together.

Now for the exciting and frustrating part: packing. I checked the weather everyday for three weeks before the final departure date to see what was up. I was informed that just about everyday was going to be cloudy with 80% humidity and a 40% chance of rain. The only time I saw sunshine was when I looked up the forecast for Valparaiso which was 0% chance of rain and 70 degrees, perfect weather, whereas everywhere else was going to feel like a hot, sticky, sweaty mess. But weather never stopped me before and it sure wasn’t stopping me this time.

Main Clothing Essentials:

workout leggings, thick socks (duh), tank tops, jeans, running shorts, light workout pullover, thick sweatshirt, and a raincoat

Shoes:

hiking boots, sandals, tennis shoes (should’ve brought)

I used my new Deuter backpacking backpack and it worked out fantastically, but the real bread winner were the packing cubes I bought from EagleCreek. Not only are they waterproof, but they also can be compacted by zipping the sides.

Travel Itinerary:

I left Kansas City at 5pm on Saturday April 18th and I woke up with the sunrise flying over the Andes Mountains. My life felt like a movie and I wanted to look around and be like, “Does anyone else know how cool this moment is right now??!” However now I had to navigate an airport that had very little english and a whole lot of people. Luckily everything was laid out pretty normal so it wasn’t that difficult. I had to find Josh in a huge crowd of people but again lucky for me the average Chilean is just a little bit taller than me and Josh stands at around 6’3″ soooo it wasn’t too difficult.

Officially made it to Chile without any problems whatsoever and was more than ready to start exploring.