South America Part I: Santiago to Mendoza

Hola amigos! I'm currently in South America travelling for about a month, so my blog is back by popular demand (seriously...so many people have asked if I will be writing!).  I feel like the pressure is on and this better be good! The general plan for my trip is: A night in Santiago, Argentina, Iguazu falls, Peru and the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, and then a few final nights in Chile at the end before flying back to Sydney from Santiago.

I booked this trip using frequent flyer points so I didn't have much option on what days I could travel (you know how it is when booking with points...). I booked a flight out on 12 March knowing full well that I have a number of 15 March deadlines. I (stupidly) thought that everything would be under control by the time I left.  Wrong, wrong, wrong. So I've spent the last few weeks in a mad scramble trying to get everything done and haven't put a lot of thought into the some of the smaller details of this trip that I probably should have (think exchange rates, plug converters, my inability to speak Spanish, etc). At least it turned out the plugs in Argentina are the same as Australia, so I lucked out on that front. 

I arrived in Santiago feeling very unprepared.  Got to the ground transportation desk at the Santiago airport and realised that I had no idea what the exchange rate is and whether 20,000 pesos is a reasonable taxi fair from the airport to my hostel (of course I also had no idea how far away my hostel was, so this compounded the problem). As there was no internet at the airport, I just decided to go for it and cross my fingers that I wasn't paying $100 for a 10 minute ride. To be fair, I did investigate the shuttle services, which were not that much cheaper. Turns out it was about 18km in traffic and I paid $38. So that turned out OK - Similar price to Sydney. 

I had 24 hours to spend in Santiago before getting a bus over the Andes into Argentina.  I roamed around Santiago getting a feel for the place the day I landed, but was feeling pretty tired/jetlagged. With that said, I thought it was quite a nice place and look forward to spending a few more days there at the end of my trip. It was a Saturday when I was there so lots of things were closed on the weekend, but the city still had a very cool vibe. Lots of trendy wine bars with tables spilling out onto the sidewalk. And of course the wine is fabulous and cheap.  The weather was very nice as well. I also felt very safe walking around....safer than I felt walking around Houston on my own in December for sure. 

I am struggling with the language barrier - big time. No hablo espanol. My Spanish is non-existent, so as soon as someone starts speaking to me, I literally have no idea. I've travelled to Spanish speaking countries before, but people here really don't speak English so simple tasks, such as ordering a glass of wine, turns into a game of charades. I'm getting better at that now - una copa de vino tinto por favour. I had a bit of a funny experience my first day in Santiago though...

For some reason American hotdogs seem to be a popular thing in Santiago. There is everything from trendy gourmet hotdog shops to NY "grays papaya" type places.  It was 3pm and I was quite hungry because my only meal of the day was crummy eggs on the plane, so I decided to pop into a fancy hotdog shop and get a quick bite to hold me over. Of course the menu was all in Spanish and I stood there perplexed for quite some time. All the hotdogs had "gourmet" ingredients (nothing normal that I could read) so I was struggling to decipher anything on the menu. I finally narrowed it down to two - the "NY style" (which I think was you're basic NY frankfurter with onions and cheese and the like) and the "aioli" which I though was cheese with garlic mayo. I went with the latter, thinking a hot dog with mayo and cheese would be pretty safe. However when it arrived, it was literally a huge hot dog covered in about a cup of mayo. So I'm not sure whether that is what I ordered and there was cheese blended into the mayo, or whether the woman at the counter didn't understand my Spanish and thought I was ordering a mayonnaise hotdog. Anyway, after literally spooning the mayo off and adding ketchup and mustard, it was quite a nice hotdog.

I did a free walking tour in Santiago (with the most enthusiastic guide of all time) to help get a feel for the city but I was exhausted and uninterested in leaning the history of Santiago, and couldn't handle how excited this guy was. So I ducked out about an hour in and found a cute bar to have a Pisco sour (which perked me up). Looking forward to having a few more of those over the course of this trip! I had a few drinks with people at the hostel but the jet lag defeated me.

On Sunday I took a bus over the Andes to Mendoza in Argentina. I had read it was a spectacular drive, so I got a seat right up front in the double decker bus. It was an absolutely stunning trip, albeit absolutely terrifying. There was one section where we went up 20 hairpin switchbacks, with no guard rails. About half way up there was a truck which had missed a turn and was dangling half way off the cliff. Looked like the driver was ok, but not the most encouraging thing to see! At least we were going up, not down.  You can see by the the google maps image that its a bit crazy!

Alas, I made it safe and sound. I booked into a hostel outside of Mendoza in a wine region. It's a cool old winery which has been converted into a hotel/hostel. It's literally right amongst the vineyards so it's a great base. Of course I arrived on a Sunday at 4pm and EVERYTHING was closed. Couldn't even find somewhere to get shampoo.  And then it turned out I was the only one at the hostel that night! Apparently a combination of the "Zika scare", the move of the peso to a floating currency, a terrible summer which saw the roads closed, and a number of other factors have just killed tourism this year.  But, the hostel owners were lovely and I spent the evening drinking Malbec with them and learning about the area. So it was a pretty quiet night but I was just fine.

Monday was one of those days while travelling where nothing seemed to be going right. I went into town to get shampoo (this was my big mission) and it just took ages. I queued over 30 minutes at the grocery store to literally buy shampoo and apple juice (oh, the stress!). Monday must be seniors day because I was the only under 60 in the shop and everyone was having a yell when their seniors discount wasn't applied correctly (which just made the wait longer).  I then hired a bike and went around the vineyards.  They are all quite close so you can just cruise around doing tastings. I stopped at two and was given full glass tastings of 3 wines at each - all red of course. So I was feeling good, albeit a bit discouraged because there was still no one around and was starting to feel pretty lonely and sorry for myself ('oh this would be so fun if I was with friends'). So I decided to go to one more winery and finally things went right. There was a huge group from Mendoza who had all met the day before and planned a day trip. So I ended up going around with them and drinking all afternoon.  Needless to say we were a bit wobbly on the bikes coming back but it turned into a very fun day. The most interesting were the gay hipster couple originally from South Dakota. As you can imagine, they are a minority when they go home for a visit.

I moved hostels on Tuesday (yesterday) to the one in town recommended by the group the day before.  Took the public bus, which I was quite proud of myself for. I know, stupid thing to be happy about, but generally I'm just lazy and pay for a taxi. I'm lazy backpacker. The new hostel is much more happening and I'm glad I moved. 

Yesterday evening I went horseback riding in the foothills of the Andes on a tour. It was about 2.5 hours of riding, followed by a typical asado (Argentinian BBQ) and music. Turned out to just be really great fun. The horse ride was up a small mountain with spectacular views and my horse was so well behaved it was so easy. I could just sit back and relax. There was one American who had a real brat of a horse who kept eating everything- didn't help that she was a pushover and let him do whatever he wanted. Our guide Carlos was awesome. After the horse back ride, he cooked the BBQ, gave us copious amounts of Malbec, and then whipped out his guitar and played a heap of well known songs (really well... He was a surprisingly good musician). Everyone got drunk and were singing along. There were 12 of us on the tour and by the end we were all best friends. The alcohol may have played a role in that! I also dropped my camera while riding. Wouldn't have been a big deal except it was getting dark and we were going downhill quite quickly and I couldn't really stop. But not to fear - super Carlos galloped back and found it. Thankfully it's one of those "tough" cameras and it survived with just a few scratches. Pretty impressive, especially if a horse stepped on it. 

So then we are at today. Boring today. I'm getting a bus this evening, so I'm a bit restricted in what I can do. Mendoza has lots of great things to do in the area (wine, horses, hiking, etc) but the city itself is a bit dull. So I took some bikes out with another girl at the hostel but there wasn't much too see and it was hot, so we gave up and had wine and empanadas (seems to be a theme here....) 

I've got a 16 hour bus ride to Salta tonight. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm booked in "first class" at least so the seat reclines to a full bed, but it's still a long trip. An interesting experience I'm sure. And I'm just doing it the once. I'm sure my next blog will be full of complaints about my 16 hours in hell, so stay tuned for that!