Travelling from Santiago to Mendoza

I said goodbye to Susie and got the uber at 9.30am for the 10.30 bus. I had yet to buy my ticket, having learnt they are cheap and easy to buy at the station. The driver didn’t speak any English but it was pretty clear we ran into a lot of unexpected traffic. I got the station at 10.20 and missed the bus by minutes.

The next one was at midday, so I sat on a bench with a metal mesh behind me for an hour. The bus stations can be pretty dodgy in big cities, but there were mostly massive families around me with so much stuff.

I had a free seat next to me on the bus, that was nice. Everyone spoke Spanish apart from one Australian who had got a seat right at the very front. A chaotic family of 5 who had booked 4 seats had two toddlers that shrieked and screamed for most of the seven-hour trip, except for two blissful hours when they fell asleep. The parents weren't paying them any attention, watching Bad Moms in Spanish playing on TV, despite the fact that one toddler screamed ‘Mama’ over and over for about an hour.

With my earbuds in, the bus trip was so beautiful. We left the haze of Santiago and went out through avineyard region, where the landscape was dry and scrubby. Then we climbed into a more alpine scenery, snow starting to appear. We saw ski fields, some going over the road in these crazy tunnels. The pass climbed in hairpin turns, huge mountains on either side. I saw the army digging igloos in the snow.

Then we whizzed past the Chile exit, and were suddenly in Argentina! The earth turned more red, as we left the snow we could see dry desert mountains, crazy rock formations. We had been going for about 30 minutes we I realised we hadn’t done either border formalities, I was technically illegally in
Argentina. But just as I was starting to figure out what I’d do in that situation, we pulled into a border station. All our bags were checked and passports stamped. Well, my bag was checked and I don’t know why. The nice bus conductor had remembered my name and called out ‘Sarita, go that way’, whenever I looked confused about the process. I asked the other Australian guy if he knew what was going on, he said he couldn’t speak Spanish either. We both got back on the bus.
Then it was a few more hours into Mendoza. The ground levelled out, the snowcapped peaks behind us.

We arrived just after sunset. Given it was still early by Argentian standards, I walked to the hostel. It took about 20 minutes and I got to see the town square and main roads. Apart from right next to the bus station, it seemed to be a very safe city.

The hostel is like a cosy house and the reception is super helpful, booking me on a wine biking tour for tomorrow. In my room is a lovely lady from Venezuela that I went out for dinner with (we shared an enormous pizza). She is trying to move to Argentina because her country is too dangerous now, but I think she’s bored because it’s very expensive for her to be here without a job until she gets her visa, so she doesn’t do much in the day.

It was almost 11pm by the time we finished dinner so I went straight to bed.