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Upon entering Mendoza at dawn, Matt and I were in shock. This town is truly beautiful. The streets are wide and tree-lined, the parks are filled with benches and trees and lots of shade (which is good because it’s hot and a little muggy). We ate (beans! finally) falafel and mexican food and found an all you can eat vegetarian buffet that rocked (Green Apple). I definitely ate my $6′s worth.

One of the reasons this town is so pretty is because it was destroyed by a major earthquake in 1861 and the authorities decided to plan AHEAD for the next earthquake. Hence wide streets and big, beautiful plazas. Something else I thought was pretty neat was the irrigation system. All the water is directed into ditches that run between the sidewalks and the streets and it looks like a river, chugging along and watering all the leafy big sycamores.

We visited Parque General San Martín and saw even more of the irrigation canals, with each intersection having a gate to control the water flow. We didn’t see any sprinklers at all, just controlled watering of areas with this green carbon-free ancient irrigation system. The park was beautiful, too. It’s 420 acres of paths, trees, benches, a reservoir, observatory, playgrounds and a hill to climb to with a viewpoint. We definitely overused the stamina of our feet that day.

The town has a lot of Italian food and outdoor stores and we’ve just enjoyed walking around (in the shade) this fine town. It’s a nice change after all that coastal desert to find a city with urban planning that we appreciate. Oh, and it’s in the middle of olive oil and wine country, too.

We took a night bus from Valparaíso, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina with Tur Bus. We slept pretty well except the middle of the night border crossing that lasted forever! Since it was dark we missed the mountain pass and are still looking for Aconcagua in the distance to no avail. It’s amazing how just crossing a border you notice lots of changes, such as:

• Everyone seems to own a gourd and is drinking Yerba Mate with a metal bombilla at all hours.
• Stuff’s a little cheaper than Chile, but still more than Peru
• The people give detailed accurate directions that are correct
• The Chilean hot dog obsession is non-existent, it’s more about the steak here
• Lots of Italian food, not so much Chinese food, rice or potatoes (like in Peru). In the supermarket there was a whole refrigerated section devoted to raviolis, gnocchis and tortellinis.
• Most restaurants don’t open until 8 or 9pm (hard on my tummy!)
• Much fewer PDA’s than Chile. I swear, on almost every public park bench in Chile people of all ages were sucking face like they would never see each other again. This was observed in every town we visited in Chile. I don’t get it.
• A lot of guys in Argentina are tall, fit and have long curly hair. Chile and Peru were filled with guys ranging from short to average height with a short haircut…and curly hair was quite rare.
• Not as much fresh juice like in Peru, where every fruit was turned into juice.  It was rare in Chile, but we’re finding a few places in Buenos Aires (kiwi juice, anyone?)

Keep in mind they are overexaggerated generalizations after a few days in each country.

I think I may have found my favorite town in Chile (even if I’ve only visited a handful). Valparaíso has been named the cultural capital of Chile and is a Unesco world heritage site and former home of Pablo Neruda. It’s funky, it’s hip, it’s got cool architecture and we had the best meal in 5 months.

Valpo is located on the ocean, sort of, so there’s plenty of breezes but it’s all port. The beaches were a hop away on a bus, but we’re tired of beaches and spent most of our time climbing the million hills in the town. The main drag is loud, noisy and full of people and we were ready to leave the town after a few hours. Sadly, the bus out of town was full and we had to spend one more day, which was a good thing, because we went uphill and discovered the real Valpo.

The city seems to be one big hill but with a LOT of steep valleys chopping up the city into numerous named hills. I enjoyed Cerro Alegre the best, it was filled with amazing, beautiful, crazy artsy murals (Marc could live here, easy) and the views are gorgeous: scattered crayola colored houses in the hills, ocean views. We ate at Epif for dinner and had a half bottle of organic red wine from Chile and ate a grilled burrito that was delicious and a veggie stirfry with a peanut sauce and a chocolate cake/brownie dessert. The staff was nice, friendly and the atmosphere was so chill. I knew we were in the right place when I heard the song play from my first circus performance at Aerlift I.

We wandered by a puppet theater and were just in time to see a performance of El Cuchillito de Verdad. It started off seeming like a traditional Chilean folklore story, then the main character fell off a mountain and went to Hell to work for the devil’s TV show and was later abducted by octopus aliens. At least, that’s what I think happened. It was strange but interesting and I’ll give any puppet show a chance after 4 years of being priveledged enough to watch UConn puppet shows.

Since Valpo is so hilly, there’s a LOT of ascencores scattered throughout the city. They are also called funiculars and they look like box cars on a pulley that climb the hill at a 45 degree angle or less. They’re pretty quick and fun to take, especially since our legs were tired from walking all day. I’ve also discovered that this town has some crazy slides . Steep and fast, we found one we really liked near the ascensor by Cerro Alegre but there’s one near Pablo Neruda’s house that bruised by butt and butt bones. Pure agony. Now I’m wary of the slides I see.

We checked out La Sebastiana (Neruda’s house) from the outside and it looked neat, but neither of us were dying to go inside and see it. We caught the O bus to Viña del Mar and walked around town to find most of the restaurants were closed, so we just had pascualina empanadas (spinach, chard, eggs and cheese) and ice cream and headed back to Valpo to explore more, since we weren’t excited by Viña. We ate at Color Cafe, which is a clutter-filled art cafe run by someone who I think works at the puppet/clown theater. We had a decent meal there while listening to the Amelie soundtrack (circus performance #2 with music by Yann Tiersen), relaxed at our hostal (Yoyo) and then took the night bus to Argentina, because this country is seriously ruining our budget. But Valpo was fun, and I would go back to it over Santiago in an instant. I know there’s more alleys and winding streets we haven’t even touched yet.

We spent a few days in Santiago, a city we weren’t that impressed by.  There’s nice big tree lined streets, lots of shaded plazas, too much shopping, etc, but nothing that really made it feel unique or stand out. It does have a subway! It’s efficient and clean and costs about 80 cents for a ticket. It was nice to ride it as there are a few miradors in town and we hiked to the tops of them for a view of…well, shadows of mountains. Santiago has a serious smog problem. Perhaps it’s because everyone seems to own a car in this country or everyone’s smoking all the time, I dunno.

We’re still in shock of how expensive everything is. We tried to do laundry and were given a price of $12! We looked around and got our clothes washed for $6, but really, it was less than one normal load of laundry…anyways, we tried Mote con Huesillos. It’s a sugar water drink that’s half filled with cooked wheat and a dried, rehydrated whole peach. It’s served cold and is very refreshing since it was so muggy and hot. I also tried a local drink called a borgoña (white wine and chirimoya juice). It tasted like a sweet sangría.

We visited the Concha y Toro winery, which was okay. We were warned that visiting vineyards in Chile is not the same as in the US or France…so we didn’t have high hopes.  We toured the grounds a bit (we got to eat a cab sauv grape off the vine…and it was sweet and delicious!), saw the cellars and tried their Trio Cab Blanc, Diablo Carmenere and the Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon. I wasn’t in love with any of them to buy, and Matt liked the white the best. It cost about $13 each to do the tour with the 3 little tastings, but we figured we should do a wine tour in Chile while we’re here and it was still fun, though not a very personal experience or loads of free wine.

We spent a night at Casa Roja, which was pretty cool.  It’s an old, big mansion with a shared kitchen, swimming pool, ping pong and a cricket batting cage.   It’s the perfect place for traveller’s in the 20-30 range and the people that work there are HELPFUL, which we are finding is a rarity.

After 18 hours on Pullman Bus, which did NOT live up to it’s hype (a/c broken, broken seats, movies at an inaudible volume), we decided to spend the night in Copiapó, a town about the size of Spokane with about 1 stray dog to every 3 people.  At least it felt like it.

There have been occasional stray dogs in Peru, but this town takes the cake so far in South America.  It was like being back in Spain, where the strays run in packs and don’t get out of your way if they want to lay down in the sidewalk.  We visited the mall as well, which was about the size of Northgate mall with at least 10 beauty parlors and maybe a handful of clothing stores.  Their main plaza is pretty.  It’s filled with palm trees and benches and vendors you see at concerts (bracelets, etc).  The weather is kind of California-like but there’s not much to do in this town and we were quickly bored.  We visited the rock museum (Museo Minerologia) which was interesting, but it’s just 2 floors of rocks labeled scientifically.  Not much bling or pizzazz.  There was one section with glow-in-the-dark rocks.

Our whole reason for stopping here was to take a side trip to the coast to see the National Humboldt Penguin Reserve, but we decided against it.  Chile, while things cost more and it’s more modern, is NOT set up for tourism.  You basically need a car to go or do anything outside of Santiago.  The tourism agencies are outrageously expensive (as are car rentals and gas).  So our option was to take a handful of slow buses to the closest town and hire an agency to take us to the penguins.  No thanks, I’ll wait until we are back in Peru and head to the Islas Ballestas.