Back to the land of BIG steaks

  Mendoza, Argentina
Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Fri 29 April 2005 Sydney to Santiago de Chile
We are dropped at the Airport at 8.30 by Adam and proceed to check-in, where all goes smoothly until we ask for window seats. We are pretty early, but they have all gone. Find out that we have no preference indicated on our ticketing, and it cannot be changed at the desk. The woman at the "Assistance " counter tells us basically to shove it up our jumper, and the service desk woman is more polite, but tells us we have to take it up with our travel agent. Perhaps if we had more points on our FREQUENT FLYER account, they may take more notice of us. Welcome to Qantas! (We've done most of our travelling with United, who've been wonderful to us).
The in-flight entertainment screens are a bit dicky to start with, and MP can't get his remote out of its slot, but it settles down, and has a quite good movie-on-demand feature. Movies include After Sunset, Bridget Jones 2, and a quite good Chilean movie on kids growing up in the pre-coup Allende years, Machucha? The food was pretty good, flight smooth, talked to the couple behind, Richardson from Greenwich, friends of Lawsons, with a daughter the same age as Lisa.
DP has a spare seat beside her after Auckland, and manages an hour's sleep lying down. MP catches a few hours of sort-of sleep in his Mexican seat which won't stay up or down. Flight is pretty smooth, and service is good, and there are no toilet malfunction incidents, but the .temperature fluctuated from cold enough to consider putting up the hood on the 300 coat, to too hot for just shirtsleeves.
In Santiago, it is quite warm walking from the plane. We get hammered for $US30 each before immigration, have to declare our muesli at quarantine, get 150,000 pesos, then head for the public bus, but get seduced into a 8000 peso taxi to the hostel. Have to pay upfront, so the driver can get out of the parking area, and fill up the tank before setting off at high speed into town. MP makes the mistake of admitting to a little Spanish, so we get the 2 dollar tour and commentary which ends up costing us the change from our 10,000 note.

A$1 = 454 Chilean pesos

Dropped off at the Bellavista Hostel in Bellavista, a funky restaurant district on the Eastern side of the city. Had chosen this as in our previous visit 16 months ago we were in the Western side, which could be described as "working class grunge".
The name on the hostel is pretty low-key, just the street number, but they have our booking, and we check into the annex, two doors down the road. Surprised to find our room has no ensuite, as our booking says "double private room" and it cost A$46 per night, exactly double what we paid for our "working class grunge" with private bathroom. To get to bathroom have to go either one floor up, or one floor down, on very squeaky wooden steps.
Welcome to backpacker travelling! Takes a little while to adjust to such things, particularly as we've just left our wonderful unit, which we've spent two years completely renovating so that everything is perfect.
We hit the sack for a couple of hours, as we've been travelling for about 18 hours, then head out to look at the town. We walk into the centre, then decide to get the Metro to the bus station to line up our trip to Mendoza.. Buying a ticket on the Metro (which we didn't use last time) is reasonably straightforward, once we sort out the off-peak fare structure and find that the turnstile keeps your ticket, so, once you are in, you can stay until closing, if you want to. However, the Metro is packed with peak hour commuters, and it looks impossible to get on. The trains are quite frequent, so we let a few go past, and change position on the platform, but the rush doesn't seem to be easing, so we spot a doorway which seems to be less than choc-a block, and push in, MP in anti-pickpocket mode with the daypack on the chest. After a few stations, the crush eases enough for MP to find a pole to hang onto, but we never look like getting one of the scarce seats. We have no trouble getting off at the Universitas station, which connects to the bus station, and check out the crowded TurBus ticket counter. There are no obvious Argentine destinations on the board, so before lining up, we ask at the information desk, and find that the International connections are in the old terminal, next door nominally, but a fair walk after finding a way out onto the street. This is all familiar territory after our previous trip, but wold be a bit daunting for a first timer.
We find that the big bus companies do not let off passengers at Puente del Inca, which is just over the border, and where we want to stay. Are directed to a minibus company, Radiomovil, who can sell us tickets for 8000 each. This seems a lot, as it is the same price all the way to Mendoza, so we check out another minibus company, but they have the same price, and don't have a convenient time. Back at Radiomovil, we settle for 2 for 15000CP, and the front two seats, on the 10.30 bus, then get a local bus back to Plaza Italia..Once again we're astounded by how many local buses there are - a continuous, non-stop line of them. Even more surprising now we've seen how many use the Metro as well. Seems too much for a city of million.
Our bus goes past the Plaza de Armas, so we decide on the spur of the moment to hop out and walk the rest of the way. The town looks pretty good at night, particularly the Cerro Santa Lucia on the main road, and the other Cerro San Cristobal, just behind our hostal. Entering the Bellavista area from the West, it looks pretty deserted (should we be walking here?) and we wonder how it got the reputation as a night-life area,, but once we get to Pio Nono, the main street, there is a lot of action. Check out a few restaurants, and settle for a street table. Have a lomo and bife a lo pobre, for old time's sake ( poor man's beef consists of steak and chips with two fried eggs on top -not good for the cholesterol), and a half bottle of tinto for 12,500, say $A25, not too bad in a fashionable cheap eats area.
Back at the hostal, we talk to an Iraqi/Moroccan Israeli, and a Jewish/Italian Brazilian while waiting for the free internet. We get to bed after midnight, but are woken quite a few times by late returnees using the very squeaky staircase, and just as this eases off, the people above us get up at 5am and spend an hour packing, with the wooden floor squeaking the whole time. Dianne finally gets some good sleep after 6am.
Saturday 30 April 2005 Santiago de Chile
DP is finding it hard to get up in the morning, but makes it to breakfast before the deadline, to find pickings pretty slim. The juice had run out, bad news for non-coffee drinkers. There are the usual flat, hard yet doughy bread rolls loved by the locals, but not us. Find they're better toasted, with butter and jam, A stark reminder of Chilean breakfasts on the previous trip. Talk to two Irish girls heading to NZ and then Australia, and one Irish man who came from NZ on our plane.
We head out about 10am to the main street and up to the start of the funicular to the Virgen statue at the top of the Cerro San Christobal, in the Park Metropolitan. MP had assumed we were taking the funicular to the top, but the virtuous DP decides we need the exercise, and finds out we can walk up the road. It is a 300-metre climb, first on the road, then on a steep zig zag track through the scrub. The hill is quite steep, and has been mulched with wood chips and terraced to stop erosion, so although it doesn't look like it rains often, it must rain hard when it does. There are frequent benches along the track, and we take advantage of them. We definitely need to toughen up for the coming pilgrimage in Spain. There are good views over the town most of the way up, but there is a thick band of smog which obscures distant views and the base of the Andes. We get some good photos,


and continue all the way up to the statue for a rest and a look at the weekend crowd of locals - ordinary cyclists, racers in the full lycra outfit, families, and some packs of cub scouts with their harassed leaders. Rings a bell for MP (who was Cub and Scout leader for five years).
On the way down, we use the colourful park map to go as far toward the mountains as we can, but end up coming down through the pretty ordinary botanical gardens to the chair lift about halfway along the park, into the middle class suburb of Providencia.


It looks like a North Shore Sydney suburb, and they have their suburban problems here too. One house has a big "No to tunel" sign. There is an old irrigation canal nearby disappearing into the hill in the park, and we assume that a new road is about to follow it.
We set off into the commercial area looking for a restaurant with a lunch special, but end up at Burger King for 2100 CP we get two whopper combos, which leave us so full we don't have dinner Get a 340CP bus back to Plaza Italia, and walk home, where we have a sleep.
About 8PM we venture out again to look at the Cerro Santa Lucia, which is lit up. We walk up through the park, past amorous local couples, mindful of the possibility of getting mugged, and arrive at the front gate to find it closes at 7 in winter. We walk to the central mall, find the (closed) shopping centre where DP had her favourite fruit drink last time, and walk past the Plaza de Armas. Have a good Gelato, then carry on to a large supermarket and the (also closed) municipal market and bus station. We pass a Metro station for a different line, and work out we can get home on it, so we buy some good fruit - apples for 250 a kilo, grapes for 1000, then some travelling supplies at the supermarket, and head home in the almost empty metro. Eating out here is not THAT cheap, but fruit and veges and meat are- if you did your own cooking, you could eat very cheaply.
Back at the hostel, pigged out on the grapes and apples (our dinner). MP pays the bill and gets a complimentary 4-pack of red wine 1/4 bottles. We hit the sack for a better night's sleep (maybe something to do with the 20 kms we walked today!)
Sun 1 May Santiago(Chile) to Mendoza (Argentina)(
Up before the alarm, pack and have a slightly better breakfast as the juice is still on. Talk briefly to a French couple with a little blond boy. Having used the Metro to Plaza Italia, and walked up a hundred or so steps from the platform, we decide to try our luck on the buses, if there is room. Plenty of buses with Alameda signs. We think the bus station is IN Alameda, but it is ON Alameda, and the STOP is Universitas. We get out one stop early, but it is no big deal .Walk to our crossing from Frederico Scotto, our address last year, and trundle quickly across 8 lanes of traffic to beat the lights.
We check in at our bus office OK, leave our bags and get bread before getting Argentine Pesos. Find, in true non-first world style, that we have been bought and sold, and we are now the customers of Coitram International, an Argentinian company. We still have seats 1 and 2, and the Transit bus looks better than the Ivecco next to it. DP chats to a young bloke from Adelaide in the next bus while MP holds the fort with the bags and waits for the driver to arrive. Others have their eyes on the front seat, so DP gets in as soon as the door is opened. The back is pretty cramped, and the view pretty limited. A couple of German girls ask us if we would prefer not to be in the front. Probably an age thing, but we say we are perfectly happy there.
There are two local men who are drinking beer. DP is relieved to find neither is the driver. It is pretty cramped in the front with the daypacks, and the windscreen is cracked, but the view is pretty good. We start off at 10.30am, weaving through back streets in a wasteland area before coming back fairly close to Cerro Cristobal, then heading North more or less along the 57 route shown on our map. The land is pretty arid, with steep, sparsely vegetated mountains. The smog seems thicker than yesterday, and you can barely see the Andes. Where the land is irrigated it is quite fertile.
The road climbs up along a valley, then passes through a long, but only one-lane tunnel, before dropping into the town of Los Andes, which looked more like outback Bolivia than the Chile of Santiago and the south.. At this point there is a lot of talking and raised voices coming from the back, with our driver checking the mirror and calling for quiet and calm. We couldn't work out whether someone wanted to get out, had gone past their stop, or wanted a toilet stop. The main beer drinker seemed to be the source of the problems, making a lot of Viva Chile! calls, but he eventually quietened down for a few hours sleep.
Los Andes is the start of the valley that becomes the pass we go over into Argentina, and the road, and an active rail line follow the river all the way. We see a train with copper concentrate vats heading up the valley, on the narrow gauge line. The active line seems to branch off to the south at Rio Blanco, but the disused line goes all the way to Mendoza, with some spectacular cuts across mountain faces and giant scree slopes. At one point the river valley becomes a slot gorge a hundred metres deep and no wider than 20 metres, with the active(?) railway line emerging from one face, crossing a bridge and plunging into the other face right in the middle of the gorge.


It must have been exciting breaking through the face into space when they were building it. Further in the rail disappears up a valley at least 5km long, then returns along the north face of the valley, 300 metres up the mountain face. There are bridges and masonry support walls every couple of hundred metres, and dozens of tunnels and avalanche sheds, so it must have been a modern marvel of engineering when it was built.
The climb at the end of the valley consisted of one set of 30 switchbacks,

and another set of about 20 up what looked like the toes of ancient glaciers. It was pretty impressive, but not as spectacular as the European passes, and not particularly dangerous barring mechanical failure, in either your own or someone else's vehicle. The top of the climb was above the snow line, and there was a chair lift passing from a flat area below the climb to up past the top, where there were other lifts, and a good selection of ski-able slopes. At the top of the climb there is a mountain troops training school, the Chile customs post, and parking for a lot of vehicles, probably for when the top section is snowed over, and vehicles being inspected. The customs post is a cross between alpine and Canadian frontier architecture. Brings back all that is not nice about working and living in Arctic conditions (Murray worked in Cassia, Northern BC).


We tried to get stamped out of Chile here, mindful of last year's fiasco, when the bus had to take someone back over the mountains to get a stamp, but they didn't want to know us. The tunnel itself is narrow, with rough concrete lining, barely, if at all, lit, with a rough 2-lane road. A sign at the entrance indicates 3185 metres, a bit more than the 2920 Stelvio in Italy that we went over in our clapped out 2CV in 1976 because we didn't read the map carefully.

On the Argentinian side, the valley slopes much more gently, and we head down past the valley leading up to the lake below Mt Aconcagua (at 6959 metres, the highest peak in the Americas) and the mountain itself, which we could see for about 20 seconds. It looked pretty fierce, with a massive ice cliff halfway up, but it was a long way off. As we were stopping in Puente del Inca we didn't think of taking a photo. We carried on to the "Integratio" customs post at Los Horcones. It is a large pyramid roofed building where vehicles are checked through under cover. There were gratings in the floor with access pits below so the bottom of vehicles could be inspected. Here there is a Chilean section which stamped our passports and took our loose form, and an Argentinian customs and immigration section. Our drunken friend made a nuisance of himself here, wanting to shake people's hands and know their names. This treatment was also used on the customs officials. We were carrying our Chilean fruit (as were all the other travellers) and looked like losing it, We had already eaten an apple each, and DP finished the grapes while we waited, and were looking at losing the rest before a plea to the officer gained a reprieve, provided we ate them on the way to Mendoza.
We finished and moved outside to the kiosk outside where the crew bought empenadas and hamburguesas, but we didn't have any lunch because we were about to stop. Rico, the village drunk, continued his over-friendliness and "Viva Chile's" here, and was last in as usual.
From here we could see down a long valley with steep, bare sides to a settlement which had to be Puente del Inca, and it looked pretty bleak indeed. We asked the driver about the possibilities of accommodation in Puente del Inca and he told us he would stop and ask. He also raised the possibility of trying at Los Penitentes a bit further down. For a while it looked like he would take us down to have a look while the others finished their meals, but it got too complicated, and we all piled in, Rico last and reluctantly.
As we got closer, we could see the sulphur yellow bridge over the water, right by the town, with tiny people on top of it. It looked OK, and the village was a bit more than just a hostel, but the valley didn't look like it would have interesting walking, and it was a long way back to the National Park, and up to the lake and Aconcagua. As well, we also had good viewing seats at present, whereas we would be lucky to get ANY transport out (as most of the buses arrived full), much less good seats. For all the above reasons, we gave the driver the thumbs down at the last moment, and stayed in the van, and carried on down the valley. Further down, it became more interesting, with ravines leading in from the side and possible climbs up to rugged cliffs and pinnacles pushing up through the scree.

This side was definitely not as spectacular as the west, but the river was larger, and the train line was still interesting. One of the snow sheds was made of curved, laminated timber ribs, very architectural yet functional.


There was plenty of action at the whitewater rafting centre, and a lot of weekend campers and fishermen at the lake near Potrerillos. Here we ran into heavy traffic (not only was it Sunday, but May Day, a holiday) Spent a fair bit of the time on the wrong side, passing lines of traffic. The driver seemed to know what he was doing, but must have been pretty tired by now. Murray had dozed off a bit, (which saved him from having to keep on stamping on the "brakes" and saying "expletive deleted").
Down on the flat land we drove past a depressing-looking oil refinery and town. Were pleased to find that it wasn't Mendoza, although it also wasn't all that flash when we approached. It is a big, flat town, with the usual industrial outskirts and system of large roads and traffic works (city population 148,000, with suburbs 600,000)
We were dropped at the main bus station just on dark, and were greeted by spruikers for accommodation. Because the bus station is off the map, and there is only a general direction to it, with no distance, we succumbed to temptation and, together with a Chilean couple, piled into a non-taxi for a quick trip through heavy traffic into the centre of town. We ended up paying for the ride, so were not shy in knocking back a new, but strange room which had been built into the garage area of the hotel. The Chileans didn't have baggage, so were quick enough to see this room, knock it back, and presumably get a better one.
Out in the street, we got out the compass, and set off in exactly the wrong direction. Had to have a second try, and headed off down to the Plaza, then halfway across town to look at the preferred Damajuana Hostel. It had no double rooms till Friday, the Break Point, across the road could do a double right beside the bar (which we declined). They directed us to the Quinta Rufino, an old fairly grand ex-B&B around the corner, where we got a large room with own bathroom in a quiet area for 50 pesos (exactly half the cost of our room in Santiago.
Both pretty puffed, so after the manager got the heating going, and the hot water finally arrived at the shower, we had dinner (and lunch?) of bread and peanut butter and apples and called it a night. Dianne had her first good night's sleep in quite a while.