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Published: November 9th 2012
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Finally last night the hostel turned on the AC which meant that Abby and I had finally reached the oasis we've been waiting for. The cold air was not enough to keep the mosquitos away, at some point between the horseride and hostel sleeping I ended up with over 20 bug bites on just one arm.
We eventually woke up and made our way to the train station to enter our final country of our trip, Chile. We were able, with some difficulty, to get a ticket to Santiago leaving within the hour.
We got seats on the top floor of the double decker bus and headed towards the Andes. Before we reached the mountains, we had one last trip through the vineyard countryside of Argentina. The road we took through the Andes was barely 2 car widths across and weaved through the mountain. Words and pictures can't do the view justice. The Andes are filled with sharp rock outcrops that take your breath away everytime you see them.
After about 4 hours of driving we made it to the Chilean boarder, which, was by far the most intense customs we've been through yet. They made us all
get out of the bus, which was an unwelcomed surprise as we were high up in the mountains and still wearing our summer clothes from Mendoza. The road just on the other side of the Chilean boarder was extremely steep and our bus driver took to it with little hesitation. Everytime we turned a corner (which we made about 40 hair pin turns) I was sure we were going over. I had to put myself down for a nap to keep from freaking out. We saw a few chair lifts, although I'm not sure where people are suppose to be skiing as everything looks like a death cliff.
After another 3 hours we pulled into Santiago. The bus station was crowded and took us asking 2 or 3 people before we got any sort of direction to the metro. We were able to navigate ourselves to the hostel which was right in the center of town. When we checked in, the hostel ended up being a little more expensive than we had planned, but it turned out to be totally worth it. We have an ADORABLE apartment right in the center of town. Abby and I have our own
rooms which we can finally spread out and air out some of our clothes. Once we unpacked, Abby realized she was missing her cell phone. We went on a hunt through all of our things, and called the bus station but it would appear that South America had claimed another victim. Abby was obviously upset, so I did what anyone would do and offered her copious amounts of wine.
We head to dinner around 930 and FEASTED. We made fun of all the people wearing bibs, however, once we ordered our waitor insisted we put our bibs on as well so jokes on us. Obviously, within 5 minutes, I had spilled food down the front of my shirt, so the bib ended up being a great idea.
Once we had finished dinner, we decided to grab a bottle (or 2) of wine to take back to our apartment and plan the rest of our time in Santiago. It is important to note at this time that we have no idea what the conversion rate is, which will make the next story seem not as ridiculous. We enter a tiny market near our apartment and grab our wine. At
check out, I do some quick math and some how convince Abby the wine we had just bought was $61 a bottle. Obviously my math was off, and after a bit of a debate we realize it was actually $6.10 a bottle, but not before Abby handed the store owner $30,000 for a $2,900 bottle of wine. He shook his head, handed us back the money and the wine, and told us we needed to be careful as we headed off into the street. Pretty sure we will be Taken within the next 24 hours. We had a good run.
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