Month: June 2015

Things I wanted to do but didn’t get around to:

Go to Waiheke (wineries! Swimming! Villages!) or Rangitoto Island(volcanic scenery! BYO food and water)

Kayak on the bay , or kayak from waiheke, or go across to Piha beach – swimming, rainforest

Sunday morning I was up at 7am to head to the bus station the other side of downtown. The bus didn’t leave until 10am, but it said boarding was at 9.30am, and I’d heard the station was a bit confusing and also over the last ten years I have been going through a fundamental personality change that means I would prefer to be an hour early to important things than five minutes late (I have to admit that so far that category has pretty much only included “travel departures and job interviews” but baby steps).  The mother in my host family offered to come with me on the Metro in case I got confused, which was very nice of her although I like to think I am not too easily confused by public transport! We left at about 8am and she saw me along two buses, a metro train and then onto the final train, where she turned around and headed home.

The station actually was pretty confusing, but I had 45 minutes until boarding so didn’t get too stressed. There were also lots of people around looking official to give directions – some women who told me I was at the wrong station (there’s one directly above the Metro station, then the main one a block along that I wanted), a guy standing next to the information booth directed me to the Andesmar window off to the side of the main concourse, and the Andesmar woman told me the bus would leave at 10, boarding at 9.30, from somewhere in spaces 40-49 (seems like this is the regular area for it, from my online reading). About 9.15 the bus pulled in with a Mendoza sign in the front, and people started lining up. First the driver checked tickets and passports, then you lined up to have your luggage loaded and get a tag for collection at the end. Everything I read said to tip a couple hundred pesos, so I did, looked like everyone else was as well but the guy didn’t ask for it.

A French backpacker couple in the line ahead of me didn’t have the tourist entry paper in their passports, and it wasn’t clear to me if the driver was going to let them on. They told me they’d rented a car and dome a day trip over the border, and didn’t get a new paper on reentry even though it was taken on exit. Talking to them was incredibly hard, I kept using Spanish words or French words conjugated in Spanish.

The bus was quite cold to start – I thought I was just being soft until I noticed I could see my breath in the air! It got warmer as we went, but it probably would have been worth having an extra layer on for that first hour.

About 10 minutes after we left, the bus assistant (technical name given in the introductory video that was played) came by with a small packet of cakes/ cookies and instant tea/coffee options for each passenger, then came back with a Styrofoam cup and poured hot water for us, very nice! They also put a movie on, unfortunately it turned out to be American Sniper which (1) why? (2) ugh.

After drinking most of my coffee and spilling a little over myself, I tried the bathroom. I had to ask where it was because there was no sign on the door. There was no toilet paper, but I try and always have tissues on me for that scenario so it was fine. There was handtowel paper anyway, and soap. There was a sign saying that the toilet took liquids only, separate to the ubiquitous “no toilet paper in toilet” signs. Seemed perfectly clean and usable, overall.

Right near the border, not only was there graffiti on the rocks next to the road (very motivated local kids or dickheads stopping on the way through?), but I saw a guy running down the mountain by the side of the road, wearing a bright yellow running shirt, a balaclava and shorts. What the fuck. Just past him I saw another cross and memorial next to the road, and a spot where the barrier next to the road had been knocked down the cliff. Um.

The switchback section was crazy and only an idiot would drive that. I took a video – you can see it on dropbox, start watching at 45 seconds (PS any recommendations on video editing software? Turns out I think I’ve never done it).

For professional pictures of this, check out Google Images.

We got to the border at noon, not even log enough for the movie (American

Sniper) to have finished. There was a fairly large collection of trucks waiting to go into Chile, presumably slowed up by the customs slowdown?But we drove straight past that and on for a few minutes until we joined the end of a slow moving line of vehicles through a tunnel, then passed them and continued. I saw a hostel and a number of shops advertising sandwiches, artisenal stuff, etc – for workers? For people stuck at the border? We didn’t stop there either I saw a train line which looked abandoned, I had heard that there used to be a train across the pass, such a shame. Destroyed now by avalanches and rockfalls it looks like. By this point the sun had come out and it SAS quite warm. We’d gone past a sign saying Welcome to Argentina, and were clearly heading downhill – where was the border control? I finally saw a sign saying “control integrado 2km”, about half an hour after going past the Chilean side (if thats what it was). We pulled in literally as the movie credits rolled, which I thought was pretty damn smooth. While there wasn’t much of a line at all, there was a small collection of restaurants which presumably get all their business from the people who aren’t so lucky…

Passport control seemed pretty quick to me, but I was at the front of the line and could go to the bathroom and sit on the warm bus while everyone else went through – it may have seemed slower to others! The French couple who didn’t have tourist entry papers were fine, the bus driver talked to the Chilean passport control for them.

About an hour after arriving at the border, the bus drove another few hundred meters and we all got off with all our bags, and waited while they scanned (xrayed?) all the hold luggage then manually checked our hand luggage. Seemed pretty low key, more like looking inside, poking the outside once and done, for me at least. There was one guy who apparently had lost his laptop on board?? So the customs guy asked him if my laptop was his. That would ruin my day, poor guy. Hopefully he had an idiot moment and left it at home? He was still looking sad when everyone collected their bags at the end of the trip so I guess he didn’t find it on the bus at any rate.
I chatted a bit to the girl next to me in line. She said ” I’m from Austria” and I said “oh, I’m from Australia” and she said “No, Austria”. I clarified and she apologised, said she gets a lot of people being confused!
Finally, we pulled away an hour and a half after arriving, could have been worse. It was pretty cold standing around inside the building, which was more like a giant garage than a real building, but with the sun coming through the bus windows it was nice and warm. As we left, they handed out lunch (a sandwich and coke). I had bought a loaf of bread in Santiago in case we were hanging around for hours, but that turned out not to be necessary.

The scenery from the border to Mendoza was just incredible, some of the best landscapes I’ve ever seen.  Mountains and lakes and railway tunnels and mountains and mountains. I took a billion pictures, and even with my cameraphone a lot of them turned out pretty nice. Sadly although I was at the front of the bus, the big front window had a polarising film over it so I couldn’t take any pictures through that.

 

And all the rest are at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jacalata/sets/72157653961237642 – I haven’t really had time/patience to go through and delete the shitty ones so there’s a bit to wade through.

Scenes by the side of the road, which I’m not fast enough to get pictures of: a woman and small boy, looked like they were perhaps hitchhiking towards the border? A ruined building with two fresh Mexican flags on handmade poles. Several storage crates with “Pizarro rafting”. A group of people and cars picnicking next to the river. A couple groups of motorcycles. Shrines – either to the Virgin Mary, or sometimes marking crash locations. An unexpected giant lake, about an hour out of Mendoza. A pair of young men with backpacks trying to hitch towards the border outside Mendoza. Somehow those same motorcycles now ahead of us again? Two police stops on the road in about 2km going through wineries/outskirts of Mendoza.

Once we arrived in Mendoza, I got my bags (tipped in Chilean pesos because ??? was I supposed to have picked up some Argentinean money before going? How does that work? I gave him a note at least so hopefully he can do something with it).  I’d looked the map and theoretically it would be a 40 minute walk straight along the main road to my hostel, but in practice it was warm out and nope gonna take that $3 taxi. I had read before arriving that I should try and change my American dollars on the Blue Dollar rate, and there were plenty of guys around offering “Cambio? Cambio?” so after setting my stuff on a bench to unobtrusively pull out my wad of American twenties, I asked one of them his rate. He offered 12.5 pesos/dollar for a US $100 note, or 10.5 for a smaller note – I should have brought 100s! I changed $40, enough to get by on until I learned if I could do better, and walked out the main door of the station to the taxi rank. A short and pleasant taxi ride later, I was at the hostel by about 5pm.

On Wednesday after class I caught the metro into town – although it was 2pm, presumably not a peak period, the carriages were packed full with people pressed against each other. Apparently the trains had been closed that morning, perhaps that explained it? I was heading in to visit the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which records Pinochet’s regime and the massive human rights violations that took place. Pretty brutal stories – I opted not to get an audio guide as I thought I could get enough detail from the exhibits. It reminded me a lot of Holocaust museums like the one in Berlin, or some of the museums in Prague that recorded similar incidents under Communism. It’s a very well put together place, pretty new and well designed.

I took a couple hours wandering through, and then walked towards downtown – the suburb I walked through was very rundown, lots of abandoned buildings and graffiti, including tagging, street art, and political messages – one clue as to how abandoned the area was that I saw a big sign up for ’30 years ago – we do not forget’ and another one for ’31 years ago’, both presumably referring to the coup, which is now almost 32 years ago.  I stopped in the square in front of the Palacia de la Moneda, which I’d seen in pictures of the coup at the museum, and ate some dessert I’d brought with me and relaxed for a while. I had planned to visit the National History Museum as well but spent longer than I’d expected in the Museo de la Memoria, so instead I went straight towards the Feria Santa Lucia to do some tourist shopping (I’d asked my host where was the best place to go and she said here – prices were about 2/3 as much as the similar stuff I saw at Cerro San Cristobal). The market is right next to Cerro San Lucia, which looked like it would offer a very nice view but it was almost 7pm so I decided I’d rather go home than climb it. I caught a bus that was stuffed so full the driver could barely close the door behind me – about ten minutes in some poor girl needed to throw up, so we pulled over to the side of the street, a bunch of people got out of the way, she got off, and then we all piled back on and kept going.

On Thursday in Conversation class the teacher asked what I’d done yesterday, and I said I’d gone to the museum. He asked the other two if they knew what it was for, and while the Brazilian was clearly familiar with the topic, our college kid representative knew only that she was going to it tomorrow with her class, and her teacher said it was important. The teacher tried to explain a bit about it, that during Pinochet’s reign many Chileans said they had no idea what was going on, and the Museum was part of an effort to make sure nobody could continue to claim ignorance or forget.

In the afternoon, we had a planned trip to the Mercado Centrale, downtown – however a student protest was schedule for that evening, and apparently marches and traffic disruptions had started that morning and the school decided not to send anyone downtown. I was going to go over to the General Cemetery to see Allende’s grave instead, but the admin staff told us that while the cemetery itself would be fine, getting there and back would probably be a lot harder than normal with traffic already disrupted. So instead I bought a book and went home and read about Mendoza 🙂 My host got home slightly earlier than usual and said that she’d left work early and taken far longer than usual to get home. I could hear and see traffic blocked up on the street outside our apartment for most of the afternoon, starting at least by 4pm. Glad I decided not to go anywhere!

Friday was my last day of classes. Afterwards I went for a short run (at about 2pm – poor timing, with the sun out and all the people walking around to and from lunch) and then met a woman from my classes to walk to the Cemetery. It was about a 40 minute walk from the school, we spotted a Palestinian restaurant along the way which Laura will have to try! When we got there, it was totally worth it – the graves include a ton of insanely elaborate marble vaults which look like any one of them is worth more than the entire surrounding suburb. (And also rows and rows of what looks like just a wall with coffin-sized vaults inserted into it). We walked through perhaps 10% of the place, far enough to see Salvador Allende’s grave – probably spent about 40 minutes in there? Some of the monuments were collapsing, I noticed one of them that said something like “renovated in 1998 by X for her parents Y and Z” so presumably some ongoing spending is required. Overall it was just incredible, well worth the visit. We took a different route back to the school and happened to walk through La Vega market, the “locals market” (as opposed to the more touristy Mercado Centrale, which is just across the highway from it).

Saturday I got up bright and early to be at school at 8.30am for our hike to the Andes, and when I got there only Laura was there because it was actually an 8am departure and I had been misled, as had she. Very fortunately for us, the bus had had to loop around to drop off a staff member, and arrived back at 8.35am! We got on the bus, got laughed at, and headed off. After stopping in a small town for people to buy water and extra food (lunch of a sandwich and juice box was being provided) we got to our departure point around 11am. The hike wasn’t too hard – a steep uphill section to start with, a bit of a stiff cold breeze, but mostly an easy fairly flat path. The mountains around us were just amazing, I’m pretty sure none of my pictures really do them justice! A map of the route we hiked is available at http://es.mapmyride.com/workout/1007516279 – if you zoom out, you can also see the town we stopped at, San Jose de Maipu. On the way back we stopped at a random bakery and all had empanadas made to order, pretty good. Then I slept most of the way home.

 

As usual, all the photos I took are on Flickr: hike pictures, Santiago