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top: cars lined up at the Argentina-Chile border high in the Andes
second: Plaza España in Mendoza
third: skyline of Mendoza
bottom: sign at Chilean side of the border
Two weeks ago, I went on a spur-of-the-moment trip with two friends to Mendoza, Argentina. It is medium-sized city (smaller than Louisville but larger than Lexington, I would say) on the opposite side of the Andes from Santiago. Mendoza is in the middle of Argentina's wine country. It also lies in the rain shadow of the Andes, which means that it is in the middle of a desert. You wouldn't realize this, however, because the wide boulevards are shaded by enormous sycamore trees. They are watered by small canals which line the sides of the streets. In any other city these canals would quickly be filled with trash and maybe sewage, but Mendoza was impeccably clean.
Argentina is synonymous with quality beef, and I ordered a steak on the first night. It was really good, but I think the steak I ate here in Santiago on one of my first nights was slightly better. The accompanying wine (a Malbec, one of my new favorites) was local and very good. All this plus dessert ended up costing about $10. It is shocking how much cheaper Argentina is compared to Chile.
Another nice thing about Mendoza was that every square in the town was filled with artesans selling their wares. They set up shop on the weekends and stay until well after dark. You could buy everything from leather goods, wine, mate gourds, chess sets, and jewelry. Bargaining is a must, of course.
I wanted to do a "bikes-and-wines" tour, but the only fully free day I had was Sunday, and the tour was not given then. Shame. But on second thought, trying to ride a bicycle from vineyard to vineyard AND getting free samples at each stop might have proven to be a bit dangerous and difficult. Especially since they're not stiff on the free samples here.
As the crow flies, Mendoza is probably a little more than 100 miles from Santiago, but since one must drive through the lone pass in the area through the Andes, the trip takes about 8 hours each way (this includes waits at the border, which were abnormally long due to the apparent exodus of the entire upper class of Santiago in their own cars for the long weekend; I saw one of those new Jeep Commanders and if neither money nor concern for gas mileage/the environment were concerns, I'd definitely "get me wunna'them"). The actual border is crossed via a 2km long tunnel at an altitude of roughly 10,400ft. The Chilean side is accessed by a series of switchbacks going up the mountains, all without guardrails. I was a little nervous as the huge bus I was on took up every inch of pavement as it rounded the corners. On the Argentine side the landscape quickly goes from snowy-white to desert-brown as you enter the rain shadow zone.
I got a kick out of the last sign on the road as you leave Argentina. Instead of something along the lines of "Gracias por su visita - República Argentina", it reads: "¡Islas Malvinas son argentinas!" ("The Islas Malvinas belong to Argentina!"). If that doesn't make sense to you, think of a war fought in 1982 between Argentina (which lost) and the UK over two tiny specks in the South Atlantic called the Falkland Islands. I hope an Argentine never reads this; they'll kill me.
A few weekends ago I went to Valparaíso. It is a port city about an hour and a half away by bus. All the guide books tout it as "the most unique city in all of Latin America." I only spent one night there, but since it's so close I'm sure I'll go back again soon.
What makes the city so unique is the fact that it is built on a series of hills. It is easy to get lost walking the sinewy streets winding their way up and down the hills. To help people move up and down the more steep sections, a system of ascensores (funiculars) is in operation around the city. You pay $0.20 or so, then enter a wooden box that climbs the hill on a very steep track. The views are fantastic. Some of the ascensores have been in operation for well over 100 years.
Valparaíso seems to be the bohemian city of Chile. There were a lot of places selling artwork, bookshops, and I even saw one or two vegetarian restaurants (vegetarianism is still a novel idea in Latin America; there are people who mistakenly believe vegetarians will eat chicken and lamb). It was a welcome respite from Santiago, which, despite being a large city, seems to be lacking when it comes to an arts culture.
One of the main attractions in Valpo is an old jail that has been reclaimed and turned into an arts center. There are painted murals, and I heard a few music groups practicing in the old cellblocks. There was team of girls playing soccer in the old activity yard, and a man setting up an exhibit of photos from when the place was still a jail invited us to come back that night for the premiere of a documentary film on the jail. We did return, and it was pretty interesting. In classic Chilean fashion, there was free wine and I had pretzels for the first time since I got here.
Valpo's sister city across the bay is Viña del Mar, which I did not visit. It is Chile's premier beach resort with casinos and expensive shopping. I guess I'll try to see Viña when I go back to the area.
This posting is well overdue. I went to Pucón about three weeks ago.
Pictures, top to bottom (for some reason, this won't let me intersperse text and photos):
- Requisite touristy photo with wooden snowman cut-out. (Which strangely says "Snow" instead of "Nieve". I am not amused. It's impossible to get away from English sometimes. Things like this do not help me on my quest for fluency.)
- Volcán Villarrica, or Rukapillán in Mapudungun (Mapuche language). All 2,847m of it. That's 9,340 ft for you people in the country that refuses to go metric...haha. This is Chile's most active volcano; the last major eruption was in the 1980s.
- Posing with an icepick (my friend Christine with the Chilean flag) at the top of the volcano. Yes, that's right: I climbed it! It was probably the most physically-taxing thing I've ever done, but totally worth it. It took over 5 hours to reach the top and only 2 to get back down (sliding on my butt most of the way while wearing a huge red diaper-like thing to keep from ripping a hole in my pants). Christine and I shelled out $10 to cheat and take a ski lift up part of the way. It was the best $10 I've ever spent, needless to say.
- This is the best lava shot I got without someone's head getting into the frame. Every now and then a big rock would go up into the air. I was nervous the entire time we were at the top. The stench of sulphur was almost overwhelming, and I kept thinking what would happen if a) I fell into the crater; or b) the volcano decided it was a good day to erupt.
- Going ziplining. This ended up being much more terrifying than standing on the edge of an active volcano crater. I paid to be attached to a steel cable stretched between two trees located up to 1km apart, and then travelled at speeds of about 40 mph about 100 ft off of the ground. On one line, they told me I could do it upside down, but I refused. This is NOT for someone who's afraid of heights. It took just about every last muscle contraction I had to keep from wetting my pants, and I overcame my fear of heights when I was 10 or so.
I've been really lazy as of late (as if you couldn't tell by my lack of updating). I suppose that the old adage "No news is good news" does not apply when one is living in a foreign country. That said, I promise to try to update more often.
Had a new experience last week: actually felt not one, but two earthquakes. Chile is one of the most seismically-active spots on the globe so I am surprised I hadn't felt one earlier. I was sitting in my room, typing on the computer late one night when I felt the floor buckle just a tiny bit and then the windows were rattling for a few seconds. Then it happened again the next afternoon. I looked on the internet; they were all a little over 4.0 on the Richter, which is nothing, really. The south of the country has had a few more severe quakes over the past month, and a couple of people were killed in April down there.
The weather has been dreary the past few days, and the smog has gotten really bad. You see everything through a disgusting fog. Now I know what Victorian London must have been like. I feel like I'm living in some Charles Dickens novel. I half expect small children with sooty faces wearing page-boy caps to come out of alleys when I walk to the Metro. There was a sprinkle of rain this afternoon, and the cloud of pollution hanging over the city cleared long enough for me to catch a glimpse of new snow on the Andes. Winter must really be around the corner now. I've checked the average temperatures, and the daytime highs never go below 55 during the winter, so it shouldn't be too bad. The only thing that might cause a problem is the dry air. I might be very wrong on this, but I always equate dry air with feeling a lot colder than humid air.
I made a pumpkin pie for Nora on Mother's Day. I thought it appropriate as it is fall here now. I found canned pumpkin, imported from the USA, at a "Jumbo" near school. Jumbo is basically the Chilean equivalent of a Meijer, and it has a fairly good selection of imported foodstuffs. I was disappointed to discover that ready-made pie crusts do not exist here, so I was forced to make the crust from scratch. I like to cook and bake, but I have heard horror stories about pie crusts. Mine turned out okay, although I didn't roll it thin enough and the crust-to-filling ratio ended up to be a little more skewed towards the crust side of the equation. I had to eye most of the measurements as I was too lazy to bother with English/metric conversions, and some of the filling spilled inside the oven, where it baked on to the bottom. Nora insisted on cleaning up, which made me feel bad. It was literally encrusted onto that Chilean oven. She said she liked the pie, but I only saw her eat a sliver of it, and she's been pushing the leftovers on me at every meal (including breakfast), so maybe she was just saying she liked it.
