Hasta Luego Argentina

The streets on Sunday afternoon
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Again we arrived early in the morning and headed to our hostel.  We were fortunate to be there during low season as the room was ready and we could go in and get a nap and shower in before going out to explore the town.  When we did go out we were shocked to find the town nearly deserted.  It was a beautiful sunny Sunday and we thought most things would be open and people would be out in the streets.  A couple of cars drove by but there were almost no people on the streets and most of the resturants were closed.  We finally found a place and got some breakfast.

Monday everyone comes back out
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The town of Mendoza has been leveled by earthquakes, and after the last one it was decided to widen all the streets to provide room for the rubble to fall after the next one.  There are also large open squares which are meant to serve as safe points.  While another earthquake has not happened yet, it does make for wide open tree lined streets which are pleasant to walk down and see the historical buildings of town.  One of the more interesting things along the street was a series of diaramas in boxes that show the progression of the street from wild frontier town to cosmoplotian colonial town, with all the major achievements like street cars.  It was interesting to see how this street had morphed over the years.

The fountain in independence Square
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We walked through Independence Square which is the largest one in the middle of town and just off it found a small street loaded with resturants.  But other than this one street there was hardly anyone out walking through town so we decided to take advantage of the nice room we had and watch some movies on TV.  We spent the rest of the day just lounging in bed watching whatever we could find in English on TV.

The next day we again headed back to town but were suprised to see people everywhere.  Apparently they had all decided that Sunday was a good day to lay in bed and watch TV.  But we were not complaining.  We just enjoyed a long walk around town, which has a very nice collection of buildings from the turn of the 20th century, but there are not any that really stand out.  I think this might be because of the long history of earthquakes that people were not willing to invest big money in fancy buildings since they would most likely just crumble again.

The road across the Andes
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The next day we took our bus to Valparaiso and since we were crossing the border we had to take a day bus, which was not a bad thing as we had to cross the Andes near the highest peak.  Seeing the mountains again was nice because basically all of our bus rides to this point had been across the vast nothingness of central Argentina.  It is essentially like driving through Nebraska, the scenery reall does not change for hours on end.  So as we left this plain and headed to the mountains I was excited about the change in scenery.  We had even gotten the front seat on the upper level of the bus so we had the same view as the driver without all the work.

A look out across the snow fields at the top
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The road headed straight towards the snow covered peaks but as it got nearer it started to wind its way up a river valley.  Soon we had reached the snow level and everything was covered in snow, after nearly a year of summer I forgot how much I missed the snow.  But it only got worse when we got to the Chilean side and there was a ski resort with runs coming from the border down alongside and over the road.  The snow looked perfect and the hill looked empty.  Oh well maybe another time.

Aconcagua the tallest mountain in South America
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The entire way up to the border from Argentina had been pretty gradual winding a little but mostly following a river until near the top when it just crossed over a couple of valleys so we could pass near the other Christ the Redemer statue, which unfortunately was not visible as there was a thick cloud covering that mountain.  But on the Chilean side we dropped almost straight down a shear cliff face.  There were 40 switchbacks which snaked back and forth across the cliff face.  I was very glad that it was a bright sunny day as doing this in bad weather would be crazy.

The rest of the trip went smooth coming down out of the snow covered Andes and into a big valley that ran out to the coast by Valparaiso.

Bill