There is no landscape like the Andes mountains. Along with two other Fulbrighters, we hiked a long and strenuous 6 hours to the top of La Campana, a beautiful national park near Valparaíso, Chile. From the top, we could see Mount Aconcagua, which is the tallest mountain outside of Asia. We also saw some cool wildlife on the way! The first animal we saw was a mountain cow, which I thought was hilarious since I thought cows only lived on flat land, but not in the mountains. Then, we saw a small fox, or zorro, and several huge black birds of prey, which I thought were condors, but turned out to be jotes, or buzzards. (Condors are one of the largest flying birds and are a famous bird of the Andes region in South America.)
The fox we saw was small and grey with a pointy nose. About the size of my cocker spaniel. This fox didn't make any noise, and it blended in perfectly with the surrounding rocks. It came very close to us, within two feet, which made me very nervous, but soon we realized it wanted our food. We refused to give it any, though.
At the top of the mountain, four huge black birds were gliding in circles around the peaks.
