Argentina Adventure

This past weekend I went to Mendoza, Argentina for a quick visit with two friends who are also from the US. One I know from work, the other, her roommate, is the one who needed to make the trip because her tourist visa in Chile was about to expire. It was a very brief trip, the total travel time was about the same amount of hours that we were actually in Argentina, but it was totally worth it because it was certainly an adventure.

I had never been to Argentina plus I had just picked up my brand new Chilean passport so I was excited to use it for the first time. The bus to Mendoza left at about 10 PM Saturday night and we arrived in Mendoza at about 5 in the morning. The ride there involves driving through the Andes mountains, so it is very windy and bumpy. I really wish we had been able to make the trip during the day because I can only image how beautiful it must be. A few times when the light from another vehicle was just right, I got a glimpse of the surrounding peaks and it was pretty awesome to be reminded that I was actually in the mountains. The view of the stars was really lovely, so clear as there aren't many lights around, plus being that high up made me feel as if they were a little bit closer.

When we arrived in Mendoza we didn't really have much of a plan but we figured it was best to head somewhere where we could rest for a couple of hours, take a shower, and have a place to keep our stuff while we explored the city. We ended up getting a pretty good deal on a hotel room from a man who was searching for customers at the bus terminal. He gave us a ride to the hotel and at first we were pretty hesitant to get into the car with him, but he was quite elderly so we figured between the three of us we could beat him up if we had to. He ended up being very nice and brought us safely to the hotel.

After resting a little we headed out to explore the city. Unfortunately, since it was Sunday, most everything was closed. We had been hoping to go on a wine tour that was recommended to us by two Canadian guys we had met on the bus (one of whom has been traveling around South America for the past four months) but that didn't work out as Sunday is definitely a day of rest for many Argentineans. We were able to explore the city though, we walked all around it. Mendoza is a nice city, I'd like to go back sometime during the week when more would be open. It's very clean and well taken care of and the streets are very wide, many of them made with brick and stone which looks quite nice. It has a very European feel and it is full of parks and plazas. Definitely a nice change of pace from the much bigger and much more polluted Santiago.

Our lunch was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We ate a lovely, leisurely meal outside, staying there for about three hours. Of course, since it was Argentina, it was not easy to find something without meat, but I ended up having spaghetti and it was very, very good, the noodles tasted so fresh. Argentina does have a huge Italian influence so I'm sure that's why it was so good. My friends took advantage of eating high quality meat for such a low price and both throughly enjoyed it, they say it was delicious. The other great part about our meal was the wine. We ended up having two bottles that were really good. I'm not a huge wine person, but this wine was definitely good. The waitress told me that it was from a winery owned and operated by a church right there in Mendoza and that they give some of the profits from wine sales to local schools.

Everyone we came across was very friendly and happy to answer our questions. It's clear to me that people in Mendoza are used to tourists, perhaps more so than people in Santiago. There was just an overall sense of patience, kindness, and understanding that I don't always experience here in Santiago. But I know that's just how it is in Santiago, and definitely not in all of Chile.

Our bus ride back to Chile was interesting, but not so much in a good way. We were having trouble finding a bus company with open seats, as we had to get back to Santiago by a certain time so my friend could get to work so we ended up taking a small, cheap company. It ended up being the same company we took to get there and it was fine, but the return trip was a different story. The bus driver was a tad bit crazy. He drove the bus as if it were a two door sports car. But it wasn't a sports car he was driving, it was a full bus carrying twenty-five or so people, and not only that, but he was driving through the mountains. He took curves so wide that more than once I was sure we were about to drive off the side of the mountain. Occasionally he would take out his iPhone and play around with it, or he would put on his reading glasses and start reading different sheets of paper. Now maybe you can get away with this behavior when driving a straight path like on a highway. But when driving through the Andes mountains? Not such a good idea. We almost hit a number of things: a semi-truck, other buses, a dog, the side of tunnels, a motorcyclist, a mountain... To make matters worse, I was assigned to the very first seat so I had a great view of everything, which served to heighten my anxiety. I tried my best to stay calm by listening to music, but needless to say I just could not fall asleep during that journey. Furthermore, I was stick sitting next to a very large lady so it was not the most comfortable ride. However, I suppose I was actually a little safer because most of the time at least some portion of her body was on top of mine, so if we had actually crashed, her body weight would have probably kept mine from going flying.

Not only was the bus ride terrifying, but we also spent about three hours at the border crossing to get into Chile. The process was extensive and not efficient and it was hard to feel happy about waiting in the cold for three hours in the middle of the night. But finally we arrived home safely at about 7 am, each of us thankful to have made it home in one piece. The trip was definitely full of many obstacles, but it was an adventure that I'm glad I had.

Posing with the people from the restaurant, they were so nice and welcoming. We were all kind of in love with the little old man, we thought he was super cute because he was always smiling. We ended up running into him later on and he turned out to be pretty sleazy which we were all sad about.

Hayley and Mary Dallas excited about their meat. It was a wonderfully satisfying meal, and even better, it was incredibly cheap.

The big clean sidewalks of Mendoza.

This is one of the many plazas in the city. There is a huge park in the city that has a zoo that the man at the hotel told me takes three hours to walk through it all because it is so big. Unfortunately we didn't make it to this park, but I hope to someday come back to Mendoza for another visit. I also really want to visit Buenos Aires, so I'm sure I will go back to Argentina at some point.