Chile & Argentina

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We´re combining our Chile and Argentina blogs as sadly we didn´t have time to stay long in Chile, definitely going back, the little we saw, we liked!

After touching down in Santiago, we spent three days recovering from Jet lag and wandering around the city, eating (sorry the theme keeps coming back...) and visiting museums, we did a lot of walking around, Santiago lends itself to that, climbing up every hill we could find in practice for the trekking in Machu Picchu. We spend Paddy´s Day there too, which was a little bit wierd, didn´t bump into any Irish people, but plenty of Chilieans making the most of the party...

We took the bus from Santiago to Mendoza in Argentina, after a crazy journey across Santiago on the metro during rush hour. Not to be recommended. Crossing the Andes was beautiful, hopefully the photos do it some justice. Made a nice change to be travelling during the day too. Sadly, when we arrived in Mendoza, we found the hostel had closed down two days earlier..oh dear, having already tried a number of hostels before we´d found somewhere available, we knew we had a problem. Luckily, there was a handy hotel on the corner that had a double room free, shame it was the Hyatt. There goes the budget for the next month...

Mendoza was brilliant, we spent a fantastic day touring some vineyards with Ampora Tours, definitely to be recommended. We were an eclectic mix of Americans, French, English, Welsh (our guide Myfanwy) and Chinese, the wine tasting here is the best we´ve experienced (and need I say we have visited a few vineyards in our travels). The tasting rooms are amazing and they are particularly generous with the glasses. We started at 10am and had such a great time during the day, we all met up at ´The Vines´in the evening for a winemakers presentation. Meaning we finally finished tasting at 10pm. Phew, hard core. John and I then headed to the Casino with Dena (a lady from our tour) to spend our 20 pesos voucher in the hope we would win enough to pay for the hotel. Sadly, we didn´t get lucky, aren´t credit cards wonderful things!

From Mendoza, we caught an amazing ´Cama Suite´coach to Buenos Aires and spent 4 days wandering about, watching Tango shows (although we didn´t make it to any lessons sadly), visiting the Edith Peron museum (definitely recommended),wandering around the shops in San Telmo and trekking across the capital in vain trying to find somewhere showing the Arsenal match. Very romantic. Our last day in BA happened to be the same day as the anniversary of the military coup in 1976, and suddenly the streets were full of people with banners and drums and photos of the people (mainly young students) who are still missing from that time. Pretty amazing being there to witness it.

From BA we made our way to Cordoba, the country´s academic capital, for what we thought would be a one night stop before heading north on the bus towards the Argentinian/Bolivian border. One night turned into four as we became stranded due to a conflict between the Government and the Farmers and a hike in taxes. With no sign of the road blockades lifting, we booked ourselves a flight back to BA and another to La Paz, expensive, but we didn´t want to miss the start of the tour that will take us up to Machu Picchu, or the opportunity to see some of Bolivia before we headed further north.

Whilst in Cordoba we visited the University and viewed some of the oldest books in Argentina, brought in by the Jesuits when they began to develop the university back in 1647, a really interesting tour given by Ignatio a student at the University. He also showed us the old graduation room, where prospective Dr´s of Law would spend 6 days presenting their thesis to the Drs of the university in the hope he would graduate at the end (He, due to the fact no women were allowed to study thereat the time).

Cordoba is mainly a student town, so not much to see in the way of touristy things, we made it to the cinema to see ´Death at a Funeral´one we missed at home, which was hilarious and we also made the most of the Parillas in town, one night eating the most delicious boudin noir, either of us have ever tasted. Yum.

Next stop Bolivia.....

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