August 1, 2008: Crossing the Andes
At 7:00, Wednesday, I woke up one last time at the Mendoza Inn, got ready and went downstairs for a cup of coffee before heading out. Surprisingly, I found the Danish pair waiting to be picked up for the Alta Montaña tour (hiking / climbing + hot springs) but they looked hardly awake and, worse yet, the coffee was cold and there was no breakfast. Apparently, it was a little early so I just went and grabbed my stuff, called a cab and headed to the bus station where I picked up a couple of empanadas and waited for my 8:30 departure. It wasn’t until almost 9 that my bus showed up but shortly thereafter off we went. However, we then ended up stopped on the side of the road for what seemed like an unusually long time. Our attendant started serving us coffee and a cookie and I overheard him mention some issue they were trying to solve. The night before, I had been talking with Kat and Alice about probably running into each other at the border crossing but, at this rate, I thought they’d surely get to Santiago before we would.
I had been looking forward to this trip for some time. A friend from Sao Paulo had traveled to Buenos Aires a few years back and had done a guided tour where they actually stopped at various spots along the way. I knew my bus wouldn’t do any of that but I was really excited about the panorama and was hoping that, by some chance, I would at least catch a glimpse of the Puente del Inca, a former thermal resort that I had no idea exactly where it was but from the pictures Dante showed me it just looked really cool. Realistically, I didn’t really think I’d see it since it’s probably not even along the path we were on plus, since it’s a 2,700 meters, it would be pretty covered in snow. Regardless, as we approached the Andes the view was magnificent but, as expected, difficult to capture from a moving bus. At least it was sunny in Argentina and the windows were still clean, two things which would be completely opposite once we started reaching the highest points of the journey.
We passed a couple of small ski stations including Penitentes - the one the hostel organized day trips to - and, the conditions on this side looked pretty icy so I was very glad I skipped on that. At some point before the border, the lack of sleep from the past nights caught up with me and I napped for a good hour and woke up as we were nearing the crossing. Everything I had heard about the crossing between Argentina and Chile by bus had not been positive: some people had waited an hour out in the cold before their bags got checked; others gathered around a small cafe and waited 3 hours. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to this part and neither were any of the people on the bus. I was sitting behind a guy from Brasil and next to him was a guy from Ecuador with two girls from Australia in the row in front. Across the hallway from me was a teenage girl from Argentina and next to her a man from Uruguay. The man from Brasil started talking about how Chilean Immigration was still too based on Pinochet ideals and how they were very racist - although he used the term freely to refer to classism as well since it eventually evolved into stricter immigration checks for people traveling by bus as compared to people traveling by plane (with the obvious implication that people traveling by bus are poorer than those traveling by plane). The chat definitely kept us entertained the good 45 minutes we sat there waiting for whatever it was we were supposed to do next.
The attendant finally announced we had to get off the bus and walk into the station with our passports and immigration documents. The room was set up with some 15 windows, split into various functions so we lined up for the first were we showed our exit documents. We skipped step 2 (customs declaration) and moved on to the Chilean Immigration window. This line took a little longer and, as I was standing there waiting, Alice came up beside me with a hug and a big “Ed!!” which, as silly as it sounds, I’ve gotten totally used to the way she and Kat say it with their respective accents - I might just have to start using it this way in the states because whenever I introduce myself or say it over the phone to someone who doesn’t know me, they can never freaking understand what I’m saying (they will always guess Ted, Fred, Ned.. even Bob sometimes.. but never Ed). I spotted Kat holding their spot in line and we waved at each other. I couldn’t believe my bus was still ahead of them (barely) even after all our delays. We chatted briefly and figured we’d probably be running into each other in Santiago so jokingly said goodbyes. After that we were asked to walked into the bus, collect our hand baggage and proceed into another room on the other side of the station where everything was X-rayed. Chileans take their importation of food very seriously: they don’t allow it. Before we reached the border, the attendant walked around with a bag for us to throw away any food items since they would not be allowed into Chile and, in fact, if you are caught trying to bring in any food, you are fined on the spot. This sentiment was echoed on all the posters all over the X-ray machine and by the agents and the sniffing dog they also used to scan all our bags.
Coming down the mountain on this side is not for those with a weak stomach. We reached a point where I could look out my window and look down at the never-ending array of switchbacks we were about to cover and, every time, it seemed as if half the bus was hanging over the edge as we were turning. The weather was much foggier and, as a result, darker. There was a lot more vegetation than in Mendoza (obviously since the latter is essentially a desert) but it was still an interesting combination of things since I could still see a lot of cacti. It was a little harder to see things because the windows were also pretty dirty from all the snow.
We entered Santiago and a few minutes later reached our bus station. Right away you can sense you’re in the big city with the never-ending stand-alone cabbies offering you a ride hoping you’ll skip on the official ones. One thing I noticed right away was a good amount of information attendants all throughout the station. You didn’t stand looking around for more than 2 seconds without one approaching you asking if you needed help. And, all I had heard so far was about how Argentine girls were the most beautiful but I have to say for whatever reason I find Chilean girls more attractive. There’s definitely some uniqueness in the facial features of people from Chile and, well, girls wear it well.
I went to withdraw from money and got slapped in the face with the new currency, exchange rate and adjusted in cost of things. In Argentina, I’d been used to dividing things by 3; here, it’s approximate 490 : 1 pesos to the US dollar - which seems clear enough except that by the time the machine prompted me to choose which amount to withdraw and I had to choose between amounts ranging from 10,000 to 80,000 I had to cancel my transaction, step back and think about what the heck I needed. It took me a couple of minutes to my mindset adjusted and finally came up with the formula to simply call it 500 (instead of ~490) thus allowing me to multiply everything by 2 and knock three figures off the end. So, withdrawing 50,000 pesos actually meant USD $100 or thereabouts. Once that was settled, I caught a glimpse of a Claro store and decided to pick up a new SIM for the phone. Claro’s SIM didn’t require any of the crazy activation that Movistar in Argentina needed: I simply paid CH$ 6,000 (which included CH$ 5,000 for calls already), pop the SIM in and power-cycled the phone. (As I later found out, however, Claro makes everything else a total pain so I would highly recommend against buying one of their SIMs and instead choosing someone like Entel PCS - which, contrary to its name, is GSM.)
I walked a block down to the metro where, once again, I spent all of 1.3s looking like I didn’t live here before a yellow jacket came up to ask if I needed help. I got my bearings, bought my ticket and off I went. After coming from Argentina, the metro in Santiago is (for a lack of a better word) gorgeous. The stations and the trains are really clean and everything looks like it’s brand new. The trains themselves made me feel like I was on the Paris Metro and even the tickets are similar - although they are not purple. I made my connection, arrived at my stop and found the Happy House hostel just a block away. Before I even get a chance to look for the buzzer, the other opens from the inside and it is none other than Kat and Alice with a couple they met on the bus (Jenny and Rob) and a guy they just met at the hostel, John. They were all on the way to the store to buy stuff for dinner and invited me to join them. I was trying to think if this would be my first cooked meal and I think it is.
Walking up the entrance and into the lobby of The Happy House hostel made me feel like I’d been sleeping on the streets for the past week. The place if insanely gorgeous: wood floors, art on the walls, bright colors on the walls.. had I not just ran into the girls at the entrance, I would have walked out to double-check I wasn’t trying to check into a fancy hotel. Of course, it is about double as the other places but we couldn’t exactly tell if it was because it’s in Santiago (everything is more expensive in Chile and probably more so in Santiago) or if it was just because of it being a pretty nice hostel. As I checked in I inquired about the place and was told it had recently opened after the building went some renovations following several years of it being closed. As every old building, it still had its quirks but we definitely felt in paradise. I showered and found everyone in the kitchen and dining room (also beautiful) working away at dinner. There were already plenty of people and, as it turned out we needed some more drinks so I offered to pick some up at the store where I found a bottle of a Chilean Malbec for CH$ 1,600 and then broke the bank with a Casillero del Diablo Cab for around CH$ 3,500.
After much dining, joking and laughing, we started to clean up. I was chatting with Rob and Jenny when I caught Alice asking me something but, oddly enough, not sounding as if she was trying to talk to me since we were still at the table. I turned around to find Alice trying to converse to another guy doing dishes who had her back to her but, funny enough, looked quite similar to me in appearance. Alice burst out laughing when she caught me at the table staring at her wondering why she was referring to this guy as Ed so I joined him over at the sink to start helping with dishes, introduced myself and apologized in case my friends randomly started to refer to him as Ed. This Irish fella, Rob, found it amusing and we chatted a bit while we cleared out the mess.
After dinner we moved to the party room where we found a bar, pool table and CD player with a few dozen burned CDs of various random stuff. Here we met Lynda, a New Zealander who turned out to have hung out with Marie and Audrey the day they visited Valparaiso. Oddly enough, later on I met another French guy in my dorm room who had been in Rafael’s flight in and had ended up in this hostel because that’s where Marie and Audrey were. Marie and them had mentioned him to me but I had completely forgotten about the whole thing. Around 1am I hit the sack looking forward to my first day in Santiago.