Top Ten Memorable Moments in Chile

As per the usual tradition, and in no particular order:

1) The Spanish school - no special moment, just the whole thing. Proving to myself I could do it, discovering an enjoyment I never thought I would feel, getting 75% in my final test and leaving, reluctantly, but knowing I had officially 'passed' stage one.
2) The mingled terror and exhilaration that was horse trekking in the Andes, guiltily watching the poor horses sweat and slide their way up the mountain and down again. The thrill of surviving without a hideous fall, and the peace of sitting on a rock eating potatoes straight out of the fire.
3) Valparaiso with its edge of danger but overall air of life and colour. Walking through what is essentially a free and outdoor art gallery.
4) Trekking in the National Park, surrounded by rocks and cacti, giggling like idiots and making far more noise than at all necessary, and for once, breaching the school's entreaties to speak, as far as possible, always in Spanish.
5) Seeing the moon and the stars clearly and without light pollution, through powerful telescopes, sitting under a black, starlight sky and listening to a man talk with passion and immense knowledge about a galaxy I barely understood was out there.
6) Standing having an amazing breakfast, fingers and toes half frozen off, with steaming geysers in front of me, snow scattered rocks at my back, volcano's to my right, and red mountain ranges glowing eerily in the rising sunlight.
7) Drinking wine in the frozen, starlit evenings, in the courtyard of our little hostal, with friends we had made over the homely, everyone around one table, breakfast. Discovering that everyone is just the same. They worry - and then resolve - the same issues of fear, relationships struggling with sudden 24 hour contact, and how they will knit the things they have learned into their daily existence back home.
8) Standing, supposedly watching the sunset on Coyote Rock, but actually watching the moon rise, full and bright and colouring the sky in indigo and reflected pink from the red rock mountains it rises over.
9) Wading through freezing water in boiling sunshine on the way to the Devil's Throat, feeling that we were the only ones there and scrambling up the crumbling rocks (with quite some fuss if I am honest, at least on my part), to eat a cheese sandwich and bite into tomatoes, gazing out over the panorama of jagged, surprisingly tonsil like rocks.
10) Floating, goose pimpily around on the salt lagoon, trying to look relaxed whilst searching in vain for 'that warm bit I just found'. Mountains in the background, salt coating my skin, birds sharing a bath with us, the sub blazing a line of yellow light across the water, setting light to the crystals of salt until our skin glitters like the landscape does as the sun goes down.