Peru and Beyond

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First off, my apologies for the month long delay in posting, but I feel like I might be making that apology a lot during this trip. My excuse though, which is pretty legit, is that I was off the map for 3 weeks hiking Mount Aconcagua in Argentina...so enough with the rolling eyes and the jazz hands (actually keep doing the jazz hands...it relaxes me a little). Anywho, in my last post I said that I didn't want to lump a bunch of experiences together, but I think I've decided against that in the hopes to catch everyone up on just exactly where I am and what I'm doing. I may gloss over a few things to save some time, but since I'm the only one who actually knows the specifics you will have no idea where the glossing is happening...so I win.

When we last left off, our protagonist (we'll call him Mike) had just finished the Inca Trail and was on his way south to Chile...I'll stop with the 3rd person. I bought a bus ticket to the border (a nice little 17 hour ride) and then had to catch a cab of sorts to cross the border and then found myself at another bus station looking for tickets. I purchased a ticket and waited patiently for my bus from Arica to Santiago (a lovely 30 hour ride). Roughly 10 minutes before my bus arrived, I moved closer to my gate since people in South America tend to form blob lines in which it's basically a free for all getting on to your seat. At this point, I also got a hunger pain in my stomach so having failed to enter the little store with both my backpack and my preggers belly bag on, I was forced to remove them both and put them outside of the door. Without going into great detail, one of my bags (the smaller one) ended up being stolen and I ran around the station like a crazy person for a few minutes in order to diffuse my anger. Although I was lucky enough to have just put my passport and credit cards in my pocket, my hiking shoes, camelbak, most of my electronics (including my camera with full memory card from Peru), all of my cash and some other knickknacks were goners. I was a little pissed about the situation in general, but my worst fear was losing all of my pictures so hopefully that only happens once.

Life moves on and so I did as well making my way slowly down to Santiago, Chile and to my friend Alvaro (we'll call him Alvy). I arrived on the 2nd of February and spent 4-5ish days figuring out the process of filing a police report in South America (not the fun-filled adventure you would expect...damn thieves), farting around the city and checking out the coast, specifically Vina Del Mar and Valparaiso (both very excellent and laid back places...the latter being a little more touristy). I really liked Santiago, but it kind of reminded me of a city in the US with all of the fast food chain restaurants...plus it was pretty expensive compared to Peru. On the 6th (I think) I borded a late night bus and was on my way to Mendoza, Argentina (to 'start' my 3 week hike of Mount Aconcagua); I airquote start because little did I know how much trouble I was going to run into along the way...maybe you should keep reading and stop yawning...jerk. Anyways, the bus ride is supposed to be about 6-7 hours depending on how long you're stopped at the border. If a few of the passengers decide to pull out sawed off shotguns or sprint for freedom then you may be held up a few minutes longer than usual. That didn't happen...what did happen was that once we got to the border at around 11pm-ish (3 hours into the trip) and went through all of the border control delciousness, we then reboarded our bus and I fell fast asleep in my semi-reclining seat. Instead of waking up to someone poking me to get off at the Santiago station I was greeted with the same scenery from hours before: a fantastic view from the border. At this point, you should start to understand that I have very very bad bus karma; I have no idea what I did, but it's not going to change and I've accepted that. Long story short, after spending 14 hours at the border we finally received clearance to continue on to Mendoza. What happened was that the Andes had been getting a ton of rain for the past few days and that rain caused rockslides that covered / blocked the road for both directions (also a foreshadowing of the future). It took me 10 of the 14 hours to figure this out because I'm an idiot and decided to travel to a Spanish-speaking continent without learning basically any Spanish (go me!).

The part of the story that I left out is that I was freaking out (and absolutely considered trying to walk over the rockslide) because the Aconcagua adventure was supposed to begin on the morning of the 8th and I ended up arriving super late on the 7th. Needless to say, that would have been a silly move because 1.) It would have been at least a 24 hour walk... 2.) There were many more sliding rocks...and 3.) Little did I know I was on the last successful bus (for at least 10 days) to cross the border into Argentina. TO BE CONTINUED...I have to meet someone for lunch and you need to stop slacking at work...clean yourself up and get it together, geesh.

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