Amazing Andes!
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2006
1
87
108
Trip End
Ongoing
Mendoza,
Argentina
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Fortunately the bus was only a quarter full, so I had two seats to myself and thus plenty of space. The bus was in fact very spacious and probably the best bus I´ve ever been on. There was more space than normal between each row, which allowed you to reline your seat further than normal, but yet still not annoy the person behind. In addition, there was a little foot rest that you could move once the seat was reclined, meaning that even I could get sleep, if I so wished
An Argentinian flag at the border
! This trip was about the sights of the mountains, so no sleeping allowed even if it had been an early start to the day.Once we were over the main peaks, we had to stop at what could only be described as an aircraft hanger. This was the border crossing and there was already a queue of buses in front of us. We had to wait our turn and only got out of the bus when the Chilean immigration queue reduced (you queue in bus order - no point doing anything else). The crossing took over an hour as we had to wait before getting off the bus, queue at the Chilean immigration, queue at the Argentinian immigration (ten metres away), wait for our bags to be ex-rayed and then have our hand luggage searched. All very boring and pretty cold as well (single figures up in the mountains - I´m not used to it, nor have I got the clothing for it!).
After arriving in Mendoza, I got Argentinian Pesos´ out of the ATM, got a map from the information desk and walked into the city centre looking for my hostel. In hindsight, I should have got a taxi as the hostel was further that I´d thought it was. Anyway, I got to the hostel, which seemed very empty. This was compounded when I was told that I had a six-bed dorm room all to myself. I watched a bit of TV, before falling asleep early.
I was up pretty early the following morning, so I thought I´d have a look around, check the Internet (the computer in the hostel was out of order) and do a bit of shopping for warm weather clothing. However, it was a Sunday morning and the city centre was dead! You could count the number of people you could see on one hand. Argentina, it appears, closes down completely on Sunday mornings
Downtown Mendoza on a Sunday morning
. It was quickly obvious that no shopping was going to happen, so the main hunt was for an Internet cafe. I found one in the end and checked the football scores - Derby beating dirty L***s 2-0 - nice one! :-)During the afternoon I went to a pasta restaurant that Lonely Planet recommends and found it to be pretty busy with locals - always a good sign. This was my first attempt at ordering food at a restaurant, in Spanish and on my own. The deal was simple: order a pasta type (meat ravioli) and a sauce (bolognise). However, I managed to also order an entree of roast beef slices in a gravy. The beef was nice (and very cheap), but it was a lot to eat in addition to the pasta that also turned up (as ordered). That said, the bowl of pasta, roast beef and a Pepsi cost all of 3.50 UKP in an upmarket restaurant - cheap as chips! More practice of Spanish is definitely needed!
My evening was spent watching TV with four others from the hostel (which could well have been the entire hostel - it was that quiet!), and I agreed to go wine tasting with a couple of guys the following day....
D.
