Take Two

As Arash said earlier, we`re now in Mendoza, Argentina. I must say, I love this town, and this country as well. It helps that the food is amazing here, despite the fact that very little of it is vegetarian... In fact, no sooner that I had walked downstairs to the main room of the hostel, someone asked me (in a lovely Argentine accent) if I would like to have breakfast, and where I'd like to eat it. I was then brought a cup of coffee (the real stuff, not Nescafé like in Chile), and a basket of pastries. Mmmmm.

Anyway, now that we`re safely here in the country and settled into a hostel, the events of the past two days seem [almost] funny. You see, our first attempt to travel to Argentina was on Sunday morning. We woke up really early, took a taxi to the bus station since the metro system wasn`t operating that early in the morning (these people know how to sleep in!), and then purchased our three tickets to Mendoza. By the way, bus tickets here are insanely cheap; I think each bus ticket (international, mind you) cost about 15 dollars. Luana reminded us that she had to pay about 40 dollars for her train trip from SoCal to Sacramento. Anyhow, we ate breakfast in the bus station, waited a while, and then hopped on the bus for what we assumed would be a 6 or 7 hour ride across La Cordillera de los Andes. Well, as soon as the awesome, snow-covered mountains came into sight, we encountered a line of buses and trucks stopped on the sides of the road. We were soon told that an accident had been reported somewhere along the route through the mountains, and that they`d had to close the passage in order to clear the accident. And with that information, we waited.

And waited.

Finally they came onto the bus and gave us the very helpful information that the accident still had not been cleared, and that the authorities had absolutely no idea when it would open. Oh, and also, we were not supposed to get off of the bus. I think they were afraid of people making a dash for the borders on foot. But had they seen my traveling companions, I don`t think they`d have worried so much, `cause they had both been sound asleep since we had reached the mountains.

After what seemed like about 3 and a half hours (because it was 3 and a half hours), they announced that the passage through the Andes would remain closed due to a combination of the accident and the weather on the Argentine side of the pass. We would have to return to Santiago. This was not only frustrating because of having sort of wasted a whole day, but we had also already checked out of our hostel, already exchanged all our chilean pesos for argentine pesos (and apparently these countries are fairly picky about currency), and we realized that we had no idea if the passage would be open the next day or not. We started going into "last resort" mode, thinking about trying to buy plane tickets (which are not insanely cheap here) or trying to go toward the southern passage through the mountains...Finally we decided to give it one more day, and to try the bus again.

The next morning, we got up, took another cab to the bus station, and while in the taxi, we heard on the radio that the pass was still closed. I was crushed. I had already begun to imagine the taste of the Italian food and wine of Argentina... Plus, it was starting to make me nervous that we wouldn`t have enough time to actually get to our final destination in Argentina, Buenos Aires, because our return flight leaves from there. Anyway, since we`d already paid for our bus tickets, we had to go to the station anyway to get our refund. But when we arrived at the ticket counter, nobody would affirm for us that the pass was or was not closed. As in, they weren`t going to refund our money until the last minute, in case the bus driver decided to take his chances and head toward the mountains anyway. *groan*

Finally, at what seemed to be the actual very last minute, the driver decided to go. We, on the bus, were dreading having to spend another day on a bus for no reason. It wasn`t until we actually passed through the immigration booths and we were back on the bus heading down the other side of the Andes that I began to relax... we had made it! So, in spite of all the grumbling on my part about the ordeal, we did get to see some fantastic scenery; the mountains were absolutely gorgeous! Also, we got to watch "Bewitched" en español on the bus. Pretty funny stuff.

SO, to end the story... we made it, Argentina is fabulous, and we`re going on a wine/olive oil/chocolate factory tour this afternoon. Can`t wait!

Love to you all,
Katie