This morning, I made my way to the bus station to catch a ride to Santiago, Chile. The route we took was the exact same road I drove up on the tour in the Andes. The ride was still beautiful.
As we were leaving Mendoza, I noticed that all of the winevinyards had nets over them. I asked the guy next to me why this was the case. He said that it hails really bad in Mendoza and can destroy the crops, so the nets help to protect the grapes. The government even drops bombs the blow up in clouds during some storms in an attempt to break up the hail in the sky. Crazy!
The Argentinian and Chilean boarder is at the top of the Andes. It was pretty cool, we were way up there. When I was getting all my paperwork processed, I asked the man to please not stamp my last empty page, so, of course he stamped it. The main reason my I need a full page is because the next country that I will visit needs a full page for their visa. Now I have to spend time getting pages added to my passport.
The drive down the Andes on the Chilean side is even more beautiful. Because of the Andes, the cool humid air coming off the Pacific Ocean is blocked, so in Mendoza, it looks like a desert. You won't really find trees and most of the foliage are those short throny-ish bushes. On the Chilean side, there are tall trees, grass, bright green bushes; it's like the Pacific Ocean has put a breath of life into Chile. I wouldn't have expected it, but there are even cactuses out here.
Soon we pulled off the highway, where are we, I thought to myself. When we stopped, I asked the driver if this was Santiago, "Si, Santiago." This does not look like the capital of a country. Anyway, I hopped on the metro, and headed off to my hostel.
That night, I headed out to grab some dinner; luckily, I am close to a University, so there plenty of great places to eat. Santiago is a pretty cool city. You definitely have a strong feel of a European and South American city. Most people wear black or some other dark color; some of the guys tend to have rat tail dreadlocks or nappy hair; some of the girls have parts of their heads buzzed and more than two piercings. There is graffiti and street are everywhere! There are also tons of stray dogs running around. As I made my way to the restaurant area, there were plenty of dogs running around in the road, barking at passing traffic.
I ducked into a great restaurant, enjoying my meal as a local street preformed rocked out some great American Rock.
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