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Published: April 13th 2008
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There is something extremely unnatural about leaving somewhere at 5pm on a Wednesday, flying for eleven and a half hours, getting a dodgy taxi (driven by a 90 year old man) and somehow managing to arrive at your final destination a few hours earlier on that same Wednesday. As a result, we were all a little jet lagged for our first few days in South America, and our body clocks were not helped by the fact that our room in Santiago had the most comfortable beds in the world, and dark shutters that block out any form of daylight. As a result, we haven't seen much before 2pm....
Not that there's that much to see, I'm afraid. Santiago will not be leaving a last impression on my soul - it's a big, smoggy city, with almost no sights and even less charm. The only saving grace is we stayed in a lovely area called Bellavista; a colourful little district just outside the city centre. It's where those in the know go for dinner and drinks apparently, and the tiny streets are lined with single storey multicoloured buildings, and lots of lovely restuarants and bars. Things really do get going so much
later here - it's pretty hard to get dinner before 9, and the night life doesn't get going until well past midnight. Our hostel was a nice, funky little place (the less I say about the head wrecking, salsa dancing, Spanish speaking America receptionist the better), and we didn't really get up to much in for our three days in the city. So our stay in Chile was brief (and expensive!), time to head to Argentina......
Our first South American bus journey was an interesting experience, mainly because it took us to our first South American border crossing. The road from Santiago to Argentina winds through the mountains - and I mean winds! The road doesn't so much loop around the mountain as zig zags over and back on one side of it; a far more stomach churning experience. We had to get off the bus at some dusty, blustery spot, high up in the mountains, and wait around for a while, while our bags were taken off, put through some "x-ray" type device, and our handbags were prodded lightly by some bored looking local. A note of advice to all international drug smugglers - take the bus, not a
plane. Although it must be said there was some woman who seemed to be given a fair bit of hassle, and was forced on and off the bus a few times, but other than that our border crossing was without incident.
Our first stop was Mendoza, which the Lonely Planet describes as "stunningly picturesque". Hmmmmmm. Remember what I said about travel guides talking an awful lot of sh*te? Our hostel was nice, but it was a good 25 minute walk outside the city, and the city itself offered nothing particularily interesting or unusual. There's a nice central square, a huge park, and some decent enough cafes, but overall it was certainly fairly unwhelming. We arrived late on a Saturday night, and as a result were stuck in a kinda of tourist limbo on Sunday - nothing open and nothing to do.......so we took a seat on one of the main strips of cafes, started with a coffee, and moved on to a beer....a few hours later we got talking to a lovely irish couple (Sinead and Dom) and between the five of us we managed to show Mendoza what the Irish have to offer!
Next stop was Cordoba, and to
get there we booked our first night bus - the bus transportation in South America is spoken of in glowing tones by backpackers, and so we gladly went for the first class ticket (at just two euro more than the normal ticket why wouldn't ya??!!), and oh, we we're disappointed! Most of the buses are two storey - there were only about 9 seats on the bottom level of ours, each of them huge leather reclining lazy boys. That's what I'm talking about! There were blankets and pillows and everything! Then, when we were only on the road a few minutes, a little man appeared from behind a curtain at the front, with trays! You know what trays mean......free food! Ok, "food" is a bit of an exaggeration, but we were given some edible substances, followed by 7up (real 7up) and tea. Then he handed out little Bingo cards, and a voice from the drivers cabin read out the numbers! It was all in Spanish, of course, but I tried to keep up. Unfortunately, despite our comfy surroundings, I didn't sleep a wink, but that's more to do with me than the bus.
Cordoba is not really any more beautiful
than Mendoza, but it still seems like a much more interesting city. Our hostel is in a really central location, and I think there's a lot more atmos here, the city just seems to have a bit more of a buzz to it. And there are a few nice squares and buildings to see. There is a great mix of people staying in our hostel as well(among them a Kiwi, a few Aussies, a very timid German girl who is far too young and thin to be all the way over here on her own, and a very entertaining Kerryman, who is the most Irish person I have met in a long long time), and on our first night we all headed out with an Argentinian girl who works there, so she brought up to some proper local clubs.
We are having quite a lot of hassle so far with the lingo, main problem being, we don´t speak it. I am trying my best to pick up a few things, but it ain't that easy. We bought a phrase book in the airport, but it's been pretty useless to be honest, and we left it behind us in some restaurant
in Mendoza anyway, so that´s the end of that one! Aside from the staff in our hostels, very few people speak english, and we've ended up choosing our eating establishments based on whether they have an English menu or not! I don´t know why we bother looking at the menu mind you, cos all we have been living on are cheese and ham toasted sambos. And empanadas, filled with cheese and ham.
So, so far we have been fairly underwhelmed with South America, but I'm optimistic that it's gonna get much better from here - next stop is Buenos Aires, and if that is a disappointment I'm going home!
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