Hello everyone.
This is starting to feel like a weekly radio show....Voiceover (When we last left our travelers, they were about to board a night bus to Santiago...let´s see what happened)
Jill and I had very high hopes for our Cama bus (bed bus) from Pucon to Santiago. We were sorely dissapointed with an old model bus with years of grime ground into the seats and walls. The meals and movies that people had told us about never appeared, such dissapointment. Sigh, at least it was comfortable. We arrived in Santiago in the morning, met up with Tim and Rania at our hostel and headed out into the city. Tim had been in Santiago visiting friends at the very beginning of his trip so got to play tour guide for us, showing us the government buildings, main square etc... all the while stopping to find places to change our travelers cheques, buy bottled water, and get his glasses fixed which he had stepped on during their night bus trip...independant travel is filled with hours of mundane chores.
We visited the precolumbian museum which was a tiny gem filled with incredible artifacts from latin america, good explinations, and was just the right size. Jill and I spent the afternoon getting stamps, visiting the main square, looking at art work, and finding her a pair of pants to replace the ones worn through on the Volcano decent.
Day 2 in Santiago Jill and I headed up to Serro San Cristobal (serro meaning hill in Spanish) where we got to travel up by funicular, and over by gondola. The views were quite impressive from our little red egg shaped gondola that bobbed along above the trees. Once we were done with the high flying act we headed down to Pablo Neruda (the famous poet, read his work, it´s great, see the movie Il Postino based on his exile in Italy, also very good) house. He designed the house himself to look like a boat. Such interesting nooks and crannies, and such amazing collections including paintings that his personal friend Diego Rivera made for him. Imagine being friends with Diego Rivera....what interesting company to keep.
That evening Jill and I were trying to get to the main square but were thwarted by mobs of people, it seemed like everyone in Santiago was heading for the plaza, we had no idea why but decided to leave as the crush was getting to be a bit much. We found out later on that a group of french puppeteers were leading an 11meter high puppet of a young girl through the streets of Santiago. The puppeteers were perched on moving scaffolding where they used ropes and pulley´s to make her walk along the streets. Apparantly she is based on character on a book and will be chasing a sliver rhinocerous through the city for 3 days until she catches him.... You can check it out for yourself if you don´t believe me http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=12853&topic_id=15
After a morning of sad goodbyes with Tim and Rania, Jill and I hopped on a bus to Mendoza Argentina. Yea! Another border crossing. This one took 3 hours, and we are not looking forward to crossing it the other way as the Chileans remove all of the luggage from the bus and x-ray it when crossing back into the country....good thing we have a stock of good books. We arrived to our hot and noisy and expensive hostel in Mendoza in the evening and headed out to see the town. The city is beautiful with beautiful old buildings kept in good repair, huge trees to shade everyone from the blistering sun, a main square that is well kept, and full of vendors and performers. Lucky for us while we were wandering around we found a new place to stay for the following nights that had AIR CONDITIONING!!! Very nice. Mendoza area is one of the main Wine Production areas in Argentina to Jill and I of course felt it our duty in this cultural tour to sample the local wares and take a tour of a local vineyard. The tour was very informative, the tasting was yummy, and the selection of cheaply priced but very good wines in all of the shops was, of course, greatly appreciated. With daytime highs well into the 30´s it´s no wonder that Mendoza reds are so wonderful.
We spent our time in Mendoza wandering around visiting the 5 plazas, admiring the archetecture, checking out the market....and feeding dogs. There are so many stray dogs in Argentina and Chile who are not so much abused as just neglected. They live off of scraps that people give them or what they can find on the street. Jill kindly entertained my wanting to buy a big bag of dog food to hand out as we traveled. A lot of local people stared or laughed as I called over skinny dogs to feed them kibble out of a zip lock bag, but it made me feel better.
From Mendoza Jill and I headed up through San Juan to San Augustin, a small pueblo (village) about 6 hours away from Mendoza. It is the jumping off point to The Valley of the Moon park, which we had heard great things about. The park is famous for it´s interesting rock formations, fossils, and dinosaur discoveries. I must say, though the park was nice, both Jill and I agreed that we have been more impressed. Having been through Wadi Rum, Petra, heck, even southern Saskatchewan I guess that we have been a little spoiled with cool geology. It was still nice to see.
From San Augustin the travel gods were with us as we made near perfect connections for a fabulous night bus to Cordoba that met and exceeded every one of our expectations. And that´s where we are now. With so many beautiful colonial buildings, a jesuite block including impressive church and university from the 1600´s, it was definately worth the out of the way trip to get here. We have spent the past few days snooping into old churches, gawking at beautiful colonial facades, and checking out the old crypts. We might try to head out of town tomorrow to attempt to escape the heat, there is supposed to be a nearby river where the waterside stays a bit cooler than the surrounds. I can´t even think of doing a hike or mountain bike ride in these temperatures. With the heat and humidity at its peak in the mid day, Jill and I were actually driven into an airconditioned movie theater yesterday. It was the only way to keep cool for those hottest hours.
So, one more day in Cordoba, then the big 20 hour bus ride back to Santiago! Thank goodness for the Andesmar bus company and their awesome cama busses!!! I´ll write again from Santiago or nearby Valpariso where we will be staying with a friend that I made while hiking in the south.
I´ll try to send some warm weather your way
Erin
