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Well after about 41 hours on busses and about 14 in bus stations I finally got back to Buenos Aires from Chile…only about 2 days later than originally planned; I will talk about later.
Last Tuesday the 11th Katie, Emily, and I took off for Chile. We arrived in Santiago the next morning and then took a bus about an hour and a half to Valparaiso. That night I Emily and I were reading but Katie didn’t have a book so I gave her my journal to write in and here’s what it said:
“Bienvenido a Chile! Soy Katie! Today we arrived in Chile. We took a bus (AndesMar) from B.A. to Santiago. The ride was very nice- we had comfy seats, great movies, good food, and the bus man smells delicious! We had an interesting drive through the Andes and Chilean customs. In Sanitago, we got McDonalds (only $2,400!!! Pesos) and then took a bus to Valpariaso. The Chilean peso is very strange!! It comes in forms or 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, etc, very different from the Argentine peso. Tramposo! We took a cab to our hostel and the cab driver was telling us that the area was very dangerous… although it really wasn’t and we are pretty sure he wanted us to decide to go somewhere else so he could drive us there and get more money. The hostel has three floor and the couple who own it live on the top floor. Our room has five beds and there is a small kitchen, bathroom, and living room. We met a guy traveling S.A. from Canada who went to dinner with us. We also met a couple from California. I love staying in hostels because you meet so many people. Adrielle and I think it would be pretty cool to own a hostel someday; business partners woo! Valparaiso is a very beautiful town built mainly on hills. We have hardly seen anything yet but I already love it. I am really looking forward to exploring this town. Is it weird that I miss my family in B.A.? But I’m glad to be here in Chile with my good friends Adrielle (that’s you) and Emily.
Tonight we saw a very funny dog that had a massive under bite! I just decided that what we had for dinner was not very good. I find myself being very thirsty but should be take the chance of arsenic poisoning by drinking the water? I think not! And how silly that our hostel doesn’t have towels!
I’m tired and wish you guys would stop reading. Adrielle, I’m proud of you for reading a book in Spanish. Good night!”
Valparaiso is a very interesting town and one of my new favorite places. Two days ago we took the 612 up to Pablo Neruda’s house because he is a famous poet that Emily really likes and his house has been converted into a museum. We got on the bus having no idea how much to pay so we asked the driver and were on our way. The bus ride was crazy! It was very crowded and there was not enough room in the isle for two people so you basically had to sit on someone to let someone else through, not to mention you had to hold on for dear life not to fall on one of the many sharp curves the bus did not slow down for. We decided that it was like a rollercoaster only you aren’t strapped in, or necessarily even sitting. The reason it is this way is because this town is built on a series of steep hills. It can best be described as colorful chaos; with brightly colored homes built pretty much on top of one another. Needless to say we missed our stop and about two blocks later the driver realized this and told us to get off; we weren’t sure if he was telling us this to be nice or if it was more of a “get off my bus because you didn’t pay to go further” Regardless it worked out well for us. That night we went to a market and were bombarded with people trying to get us to buy their fruit or their fish, which was being gutter right there on the street.
The next day we went to Isla Negra to another one of Pablo Neruda’s other homes, which was also very beautiful. We had tea and grilled cheese in this little café on a cliff overlooking the ocean. We then chased the bus through the pouring rain to get back.
The next day we went to Vina Del Mar, a more touristy resort town, and eventually found Museo de Fonk. They have one of only five heads taken off Easter Island along with other artifacts from there and other Indigenous cultures. They also have some extremely creepy miniature heads… although I’m not sure why. We then got some “Arabic food”, which was really just a chicken wrap.
When we got to Valparaiso we took the 612 again only this time we just took it to the other side of town. It was a pretty good tour of the town, we even got to sit the whole way this time! At the other end we took an ascensor up and had a really good view of the city and the bay.
Oh, I almost forgot about under-bite Dog! We saw him the first night and thought he was pretty funny, although he followed us around all night. The next day we were way on the other side of town and were sitting on a bench at the dock when Katie turns around and exclaimed “No...Freaking… Way!!” and there was Under-bite Dog! The next day we saw him again after lunch back on our side of town; he found us again. And yet again the next day in a different part of town there he was again! We decided to take some pictures with him and a local guy came over and told us they call him Osama. Haha
One of the days we ate at a fish market and I ordered something not being exactly sure what I was getting, I just knew it was something with shellfish and I like shellfish so I thought I would risk it. It turned out to be a kind of soup with all different kinds of shellfish in it. Most of it was pretty good until I bit into something that squirted and tasted horrible. Oh-well we could always get the meat on a stick they were grilling in the street which was delicious.
We then planned to spend our last day (although we ended up having an extra day) in Santiago. We went to Pablo Neruda’s last home went to the park. We took the funicular up to the top of a big hill in which we had a very good view of the city which is surrounded by mountains. We did a lot of street shopping and just walking around. I like Santiago because it was very clean, or at least the area we were in. We found a park where there was a ton of people juggling which was interesting.
Ok, now for our journey back to Buenos Aires. We got up Monday morning and left our hostel for the bus station to catch our bus back to B.A…. only it wasn’t going because the pass between Santiago and Mendoza through the Andes was closed because of snow. Who would ever have thought I would get stuck in South America because of snow?? When we were finally told by some random guy that our bus wasn’t coming we went to the kiosko for our bus company to see what our options we were, unfortunately we only had two: pay for another bus that would leave that day and go 30 hours out of our way or pay for two or three more nights in Santiago and then another bus once the pass was clear. Unlike the states they had no refund policy. We decided to take the bus that left that day so we could get home sooner. Because we had nowhere to go we set up camp in the food court, in which we had McDonalds three times (they accepted credit card). This was necessary because we were all about out of Chilean pesos and didn’t want to take out more and we needed them in order to go to the bathroom. Later we found a money exchange booth and between all of us exchanges about $25 worth of Argentine pesos. I bought some playing cards and we played cards all day. Ten hours later we were on our bus!
We got cama on this bus which was nice, however they decided not to turn the heat on and gave us no blankets or pillows. We spent about 4 hours going through customs on the top of a snowing mountain…still no heat. Oh another thing about these busses is they have bathrooms but only for liquids, therefore they don’t give you toilet paper. Not fun especially since this one bus trip took 22 hours. We only watched one movie on this bus, Black out, worst movie ever… not to mention once it was done they played it again! They also never fed us besides a cup of coffee for breakfast and then we stopped somewhere and had to buy our own food even though we were told we got breakfast and lunch on the bus. There were two girls sitting behind us from Canada who don’t speak any Spanish, I don’t understand how people can do that, we ended up helping them a few times because they didn’t know what was going on. Now I will enter a page from my journal that I wrote on the bus:
Disco Inferno!! Are you kidding me?? Ok we definitely had to pay extra money to go 30 hours out of our way on the worst bus ever!!! They have no heat nor blankets or pillows! They haven’t fed us besides coffee for a period of about 21 hours, and now we are watching Disco Inferno!!
-10 minute later-
Alright so we just passed through some little middle of nowhere town and saw a sign for Neuquen, where we need to catch our next bus. However the road to get there is blocked by protesters burning things in the middle of the road! Hopefully we will make it there in time to catch our next bus to B.A. or we will have to buy a new ticket and wait who knows how long. Oh by the way it’s been four days since any of us have showered and six days since I’ve washed my hair because our hostel was too cold to go to bed with we hair.
-1 hour later-
Ok now to make things even worse I’m pretty sure I have a fever and my head, neck, and ears hurt... a lot. We still have to get to Neuquen , wait for our next bus, and then go 18 hours on a semi-cama bus
Well we got to Neuquen around 7 when we were supposed to get there at 2:30. We then camped in their food court and played some more cards until our next bus left at 11. On this bus we had semi-cama which is not as nice at cama, pretty much your standard bus but the seats recline a bit. It was nice because at least this but turned on the heat, gave us pillows, and fed us. And 19 hours later we arrived in B.A.!! A trip that should have taken about 18 hours instead took about 55, 41 of those spent in a bus seat. In spite of how much those few days really sucked I do feel fortunate to be having all the experiences I am having down here.
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