The Andes

     Buenos días from Mendoza Argentina! I'm here in the city at a research center with my parents as they study the Andes Mountains, which stretch along the west coast of South America. It’s very warm here in the city, but we're going out to the mountains in a few days, and I suspect the same won't be true at those high altitudes. We've just finished "el desayuno," and already mom and dad are working. We woke up pretty early, but since the hotel is in the city and near the research center, it didn't take nearly as long as it has in trips past to get from point a to point b. I quite enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city. The air is dusty, the people are frantic, and despite all this movement everything seems perfectly orchestrated, the city like inter-workings of a complex machine. Here there's life everywhere. I've even befriended a stray named Pedro much to my parent's dismay. They're much too busy to do much about it though. They are hard at work studying the complicated plate boundary where the Nazca Plate and a portion of the Antarctic Plate are sliding under the South American Plate (boundary location: 32°27'40.63"S 73°13'10.80"W).

     This sort of boundary they are studying is called a subduction boundary. Here the denser, oceanic Nazca and Antarctic Plates subduct (fancy geology word for go under) beneath the continental South American as they are forced together, causing a deep ocean trench. As the plates dive down toward the hot mantle, the rock encounters greater heat and pressure, and is heated into magma. The water also helps by lowering the melting point of the mantle, and aids in this melting into magma. That magma then rises as we know hot matter does and breaks the surface to form volcanoes.  The Andes are the result of this volcanism as well as uplift, raise in elevation caused by tectonics. Here is a diagram subduction causing volcanoes: 

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/subducvolc_page.html

As you can see the volcanoes form slightly to the continental side of the boundary creating on land volcanoes, but if this were the case of two oceanic plates the subsequent volcanoes would form islands. Here is a picture of that: 

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/subducvolc_page.html

The Andes have many volcanoes, which are divided into four different zones: the Northern, Central, Southern, and Austral Zones.  These volcanoes erupt every so often, some having been dormant and others having been erupting for years. The movement of the molten rock combined with the converging plates creates earthquakes in this area as well. These earthquakes have been some of the biggest ever recorded for instance the 9.5 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in 1960. There have been recent earthquakes every couple of years or so, but none quite as big as this. There are also hot springs and geysers due to the geothermal activity in the area. The seismic activity in this area has been going on for millions of years and will continue to for millions more.
Here is an Andean volcano in Ecuador:

  http://www.monstersandcritics.com/science/features/article_1390385.php/In_photos_Volcanic_Eruptions_in_Ecuador_and_Chile
Pic of hot springs in Chile from you guessed it masterfile.com:

 http://www.masterfile.com/stock-photography/image/600-03075632/Hot-Springs-at-El-Tatio-Antofagasta-Region-Chile