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.
