Day 3, Santiago to Mendoza

We woke with the rest of the city and were checked out by 8am on a mission:  get to the bus station and figure out transportation out of Chile, over the Andes and into Argentina.  Clara & I often joke about being on The Amazing Race, so we like creating "missions" like this for ourselves.  It turned out to be pretty straight forward and exactly as the guide book said.  The scenarios we'd formed in our heads, me imagining riding on the roof of a Guatamala-style "chicken bus", and Clara imagining some hush hush deal with a private driver, like some sort of Mexican "mule", were dashed by the plethora of bus company kiosks offering luxury service direct to Mendoza.  There was even an option for a sleeper car.  We roughed it and got a couple seats on a double-decker tour bus that only reclined 3/4 of the way.  It was like a cruise ship on wheels with wall to wall windows to soak in the vistas and it cost about $25 each.
As we snacked on the provided box breakfast (which made the incredibly buttery ham/cheese croissants we got at the bus station completely gluttonous), and settled into "The Hunt for Red October" in Spanish, the countryside reminded me of Napa.

The scenery became more and more spectacular the farther we got from Santiago.  The dry and dusty hills were made less barren by verdant creases in the topography often striped with perfect rows of perfectly kept grape vines.  Windbreaks of pencil-thin cottonwoods towered like the buildings we'd left in the city and hinted at frosty mountain gusts that must cause ulcers for the region's vintners during other parts of the year - on this day, the conditions seemed ideal for producing world-class pours.  Late summer is a tortuous time for a grape as its choked of water to encourage increased sugar production.   The view from our captains chairs was now of a Martian character as the lowlands raised their rusty colored hackles and signs of fierce erosive forces revealed ....the road-cuts too gave us some great views under the hood where  the tightly folded strata told of eons of volcanic activity.  The road itself is an engineering marvel of serpentine switchbacks that led us towards the border, into the heart of the Andes.  At the top, a bunker-like building that houses border control.

Like all border crossings, it was a complete shit show. Long lines of cars and buses and people on foot crawled past the four open kiosks to get their proper seals of approval.  As in the airport, there were more workers than seemed necessary, most milling about chatting with one another and occasionally forming small circles to pass a maté gourd around.  It was very systematic.  One of them, usually one of the women, would fill the gourd with hot water from a thermos inside the kiosk, bring it out to the group of border patrollers, bus drivers and baggage handlers, it would get passed around and sipped by all and then back to the keeper of the thermos for a refill.  This constant maté drip must get them through the daily routine, especially when this place is buried in snow.  DMVs back home should consider adopting this ritual.

We wound our way down the Argentina side of the mountains and rolled into Mendoza around 4pm.  On the taxi ride to La Bohemia (our home for the next fews days), I was immediately struck by the canopy cover of this desert town.  Massive sycamores and locust lined every street, reaching up and out of canal-like gutters that made me think of Aztecs, cast their shade and transpiration over every inch.  Mendoza is an oasis in the truest sense of the word and clearly understands the value of trees in keeping things cool and pleasant.  Our little boutique hotel was similarly cool and pleasant.  Sylvia, our host, was a sweetheart who had lived in New Jersey for some of her life and spoke very good English.  Her son, Amir, was the chef at the in-house restaurant and could have been confused for a character from Jersey Shore.  His waistline and bulging neck meat spoke of his skills in the kitchen.  We liked him immediately.

We dropped off our bags, tested the bed and spruced up to hit "the strip" two blocks down.  It was only 6ish and things were just starting to come to life, but the college scene could not be mistaken.  Restaurant bar after bar, interspersed with nightclubs and cafes all with outdoor sidewalk seating that got broken down/set up daily.  We chose one of the mellower ones, ordered a giant Andes beer to commemorate the days drive and broke out the guidebooks to plan our next few days.  Clara is champ at this part and I pretty much journaled and people watched while she plotted our stint in Mendoza, our first taste of Argentina, home of the Malbec.




  

Santiago, Day 2

This morning we slept until the afternoon.  It wasn't on purpose - we had both agreed on a 'sleep when we're dead' approach to this trip, but our bodies had other plans.  And good sound sleep, in any country, is a thing to be relished.  When we finally sat down for breakfast, they would only serve us lunch (solo croque mesieur, no croque madame...something about serving eggs after noon), and we had to plead for coffee.  Looking around at all the men in suits and women in platforms, it was apparent that we were in the classy part of town, the 'central business district' as they call it in text books, and where ordering breakfast at lunch is a no-no.  Fair enough.  We gobbled down our ham/cheese snacks and set out to find a crunchier crowd in Parque San Cristobal, leaving the burgoisis to their heavily salted salads.

Parque S.C. is contained w/in a fish-shaped mini-mountain that rises up from the middle of Santiago and is easily accessed by 3-4 metro stops.  We entered via the most northerly entrance where there is an old-school rail car gondola (funiculo) what takes you straight up a pretty sheer cliff face and drops you at the foot of an enormous shrine to the Virgin.  It's at least 30ft tall and brilliant white w/ hands stretched out to the world, as is her custom.

We soaked her in, said a few prayers and then charted our way along the ridge line to see the various other points of interest, including 2 public pools and several 'botanical gardens'.  The entire 500 acre park is irrigated in one way or another, either by stone culverts or overhead sprinklers.  One of our favorite parts of the 4-hr walk was slipping and sliding our way down a less trodden path being doused intermittently by the afore mentioned overhead sprinkler system.  It was like an adult version of that Crocodile Mile game we all loved so much as kids.  

It was a scorcher, around 90F, but the canopy and constant misting kept us cool and energized.  We hoped to join the locals in one of the pools, but our powers of persuasion were not enough to get the front desk guys to resend their 'no swimming in dresses' policy.  What's with Chile and these weird social norms.  We made our way back down the mini-mt, winding through pocket parks that seemed to go on and on.

They had a rustic but elegant way of labeling parts of their collection that I took pics of for future reference.  It reminded me why I love arboreta and bot gars.  The plants satisfy your curiosity by telling you their names. As far as botanical gardens go, this one was very park-like, strewn with reclining lovers young, and not so young, and groups of teens juggling soccer balls next to duck-filled ponds (the source and repository for the irrigation system).  I was surprised by the number of cyclists we saw on the road, many decked out in full blown racing kits, which I thought was a Seattle thing.

On our way back to town, we crossed over an impressive bridge spanning a chocolate milk trickle lined by a park in a part of town called Bella Vista.  We had built up a hankering for a cold drink and a bite and found a place called Languria to satisfy both.  The place was rad.  The logo, the menu design, the interior and a waiter with the most impressive Dali-style mustaches I've ever seen in real life.  The pisco sours went down easy and were just the thing to accompany the cheese, olives and proscuitto plate.  We washed it all down with some local micro-brews, which I also thought was a Seattle thing.
 

We rambled back to our hotel apartment for a quick romp and to freshen up, then went back out for drinks and bites part two.  We set out in search of a specific restaurant from one of the guides, but were unable.  Clara and I fought like hell, as is our custom, and we somehow wound up in a hotbed of tourists and overpriced drinks.  We picked at some pretty decent ceviche, sullenly, before deciding to head back to Languria where we made up over some pasta and red wine.  There are two people in the world that can push my buttons, my little brother, Teddy and Clara.  Though exhausting at times, this rare ability is one of the many reasons I love her.  

Argentina Adventurists

The stars are out tonight in Santiago.  I'm surprised b/c on the ground, Santiago seems quite the metropolis with its modern & well-planned highway system, clean & navigable metro, and towering high rises that from many vantage points wall out the Andes' dusty foothills beyond city limits.  I would expect so much modern progress to wash out any twinkling spotlights gleaming down from the heavens, but there they are.    

We arrived this morning around 10am after an all day & overnight flight from SEA via ATL - it had been sleepless (for me) but bearable.  They squeezed in 3 full length movies:  The Ides of March and  Moneyball (both of which feature acting genius, Phillip Seymour Hoffman), & Water for Elephants (which features that pretty vampire boy from Twilight).  The vampire elephant one was awful, but only the insomniacs had to bear it.  I just don't seem to be shaped right for airplanes seats, too average or something.  I was extremely jealous of the teenage princess that had the 4-seat middle section to stretch out on...she slept the entire way, that little bitch.  

When we landed, the airport was shockingly clean & modern.  I had been expecting Costa Rican standards but was met w/ accommodations better than most I've encountered state-side (I rank Seattle & Charlotte pretty high).  Other than the unexpected $140/person entry fee (where were you on that one, Lonely Planet), the whole experience from immigration to customs to baggage claim & even hiring an taxi was hassle free & painless.  The only similarity to Costa Rica was expressed in the casual & friendly nature of everyone we encountered.  Side-note: there were 3X as many workers as was necessary, but just the right amount to make it seem more like a social gathering than a daily grind.  Even the customs dogs had other dogs to play with between bag sniffing.  They were especially interested in the beef jerky we'd brought, which was later confiscated out of principal (Chile is very proud of their meat).  At first blush anyway, it seemed as if Europe and Central America had had a baby -  a clean, efficient, down-to-earth baby.

Our taxi driver was a young guy, extremely nice & willing to suffer my Spanish.  It was already 70F & he informed us it would hit 90F by midday - completely normal for late summer.  The landscape that flashed by as we rode the 20 mins to our hotel/apartment in Providencia was khaki colored & arid but punctuated by purposeful platings of small-leaved trees, a few colorful shrubs and creeping ground-covers stabilizing the road cuts.  There were a few rusty slums here & there but it seemed like typical suburbia in Southwest, USA for the most part.  A thick, humid haze obscured the rising countryside beyond, but there were glimpses of steepness.


We checked into our hotel, which turned out to be more like an apartment for long-term business folk, and I was extremely grateful that I'd printed out our booking as it was all the front desk guy was interested in as far as our reservation was concerned.  There was no computer screen to look at.  We were a few hours early for check-in, but they didn't care and took us up to our 11th floor suite.  The guy couldn't have been nicer and even tracked down some maps and made a few suggestions for our brief 2-days in Santiago.  We took his advice, thanked him, took cool showers, made hot love, and followed it up with a 2-hr nap.

We woke, more or less refreshed and put on our walking shoes to explore our immediate surroundings as well as Barrio Brazil were much of the action takes place.  Maneuvering the metro was a snap and a deal at $1/each.  It was peak siesta when we arrived.  We ambled through quiet graffiti-filled streets contently lost.  Ahh, siesta, how I've missed thee.  I first ran into siesta in Spain in high school.  Even then it struck me as a beautiful part of culture that America could benefit from adopting - 15 years later, it still strikes me thus.

We took in some tree and people watching from a park bench in Plaza Brazil and then headed to the part of the map w/ the highest concentration of points-of-interest dots to track down a drink.  Life was starting to stir and the streets buzzed like a waking hive.  We looked lost enough to attract attention from Giermo & Gloria from whom we received an impromptu tour of Plaza Constitution, the seat of Chile's government, protected by Vatican-like guards with funny hats.  Giermo was thrilled to be able to practice his English and we were equally thrilled for the insider information.  We got some tips, parted ways and settled back into some people watching, thought this time with cold beers to accompany our gandering.  We killed 2 hours lapping up the scene on that tree-shaded promenade & each other's company.  It's crazy being married and hardly having the opportunity to simply sit with your significant other, but it felt like it had been a while.  After a month of solid nose-to-grindstone in preparation for our respective absences from work it felt nice to finally be starting our SA adventure, our first big trip together since the Caravan.  

We continued our first day with a short cab ride to La Vaca Gorda (Lonely Planet's #1 thing to do/see in Santiago...not #1 place to eat, #1 thing period) for an early dinner and for the first of no doubt many steaks and bottles of red wine to come.  Speaking as a habitual vegetarian, the meat was exquisite.  The cow was called Wagu and it was cooked to perfection.  I've often thought that there are dozens of good reasons to eat vegetarian but only one good reason to eat meat - it's delicious.  This steak reaffirmed that belief.   Side-note:  we witnessed a mini "flash mob" incident when a group of disgruntled college aged kids and riot police played hide & seek outside our restaurant window...college tuition rates in Chile have skyrocketed in the past couple years as the austerity trend sweeps the globe.  I had just read about the increase in flash mobs in Wired on the plane, so it didn't seem all that dangerous, but our adorable waiter who looked like a Chilean Frank insisted we close the wooden shutters non the less.  

After dinner we managed to find our way back to the hotel via that afore mentioned super manageable metro.  We cried our eyes out watching "The Help" on the iPad and now I've banished myself to the living room where I'm trying to fend off the fiercest bout of gas that only red meat can conjure by writing in this journal next to an open window and starring sleepily at the stars - I think that red one's Mars.