Crossing the Andes - onwards to Mendoza and Cordoba

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The bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza was not exactly the best journey of all time. On paper, the distance is only 300 or so kilometres, but with the Andes and an international border to cross, the journey turned out to take the whole day. The worst part was going through customs - on the Argentinean side of the border, all vehicles had to drive through a large warehouse, where all passengers disembarked to have their paperwork checked, and then all bags were taken off the bus, scanned and checked, and then reloaded. This made the border crossing the slowest and worst that I have had to do so far in South America, whereas I thought it was going to be the easiest as Chile and Argentina are 2 of the most developed countries, so I assumed the formalities would be minimal, which turned out to be far from the case. On the positive side, we did go pass some stunning Andean scenery, and although we passed close to Aconagua, the highest mountain in both the Southern and Western hemispheres, we didn't actually get to see it. We had little time in Mendoza when we eventually got there, as the following day we would be moving on again to Cordoba, leaving us only an evening to explore the city. Mendoza is famed for being the capital of the Argentinean wine country, and the surrounding countryside was filled with vineyards. The city itself didn’t contain that much to see - there were lots of small independent handicraft stalls lining the streets in and around the main square, whilst the main shopping street, lined with restaurants, reminded me of Spain (Barcelona in particular) in terms of the eating culture. In Argentina many restaurants don’t open until very late, as the normal custom is to eat after 9, even as late as 11, but luckily in touristy cities there are always some restaurants open at all hours. So after dinner, we made our way back to our hotel whilst exploring a bit more, but I think we pretty much saw everything there was to see in our very brief visit.

The bus journey the next day was a 10 hour stint, and frustratingly the bus didn’t take the motorway for most of the journey, instead going through lots of small towns to pick up or drop off very few people. So we didn’t arrive and check into our hotel in Cordoba until nearly 9 in the evening, and so by the time we’d finished dinner, it was pretty much time to head back to the hotel. Luckily we had more time in Cordoba than in Mendoza, and as Cordoba is the second city of Argentina, there was a definitely more to see and do. Our hotel was on one of the main pedestrianised streets near the main square, and was bustling with street sellers, peddling fake DVDs, handicrafts, clothes and pretty much anything, until around 11 at night. During the day, especially the morning, it all seemed much quieter. Cordoba is known as “The Mediterranean City” in Argentina - I’m not quite sure why as it didn’t feel any more Mediterranean than any other Argentinean city. A lot of the architecture in and around the centre was quite grand and imposing; a few areas seemed to have been regenerated, such as a converted prison, giving the city a modern and stylish feel. After walking around and exploring the centre and the big park on the outskirts, we ended up at the zoo and decided it was worth the meagre entrance fee. And in hindsight, it definitely was - it turned out to be actually quite a big zoo, with a fair amount to see. After the zoo, it was back into the city centre for dinner, and we ended up at a Parador Libre (all you can eat grill), which for a very cheap price offered a large selection of meats, pastas, salads, other hot dishes and desserts, though unfortunately most of quite a low quality. We had managed to squeeze most of Cordoba’s main sights into one day, which was lucky as the next day we had our third, and last, long bus journey, this time 8 hours to Buenos Aires. The next blog will come from there.

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