Chaska in South America

I just left Chile today and am now back in Argentina for a few days before heading over to Urugauay and Brazil. Matt and I spent two nights in Cordoba, Argentina before going to Chile. We had planned to make it to Mendoza, Argentina which is really close to the Chilean border, but bus tickets were sold out for several days, so we stayed in Salta an extra day and then decided to go to Cordoba instead. Since it’s summer here now, Argentineans are all travelling like crazy and transportation and accomodation are sometimes hard to get. Cordoba is a fairly large city, and while there we mostly just hung out and did “city stuff”, like went to the movies and walked around the center a lot. I liked Cordoba a lot, and like Buenos Aires, it reminded me a lot of Spain. At this point in our trip, I’ll have to say that I was really starting to feel the effects of travelling constantly for such a prolonged period of time. I honestly didn’t think it could happen, but I was feeling completely worn out from constantly moving and really didn’t feel like doing much. After two nights in Cordoba, we took a 16 hour bus ride to Santiago, Chile. My parents have some really good friends living there, so we were able to stay with them while there which was great. Santiago is a big city and is really modern…it actually is the closest to the U.S. of all the countries I’ve visited. A lot of really huge shopping malls with just about any American store or restaraunt you can think of, huge multiplex movie theaters, and a really nice modern metro system. It’s really expensive in Chile in comparison to other South American countries as well. The prices for food and stuff are just about as expensive as in the States. It was great that we were able to stay with my parents’ friends, because a week in Chile would have made us broke! We had a really nice time staying with the family there, and they took really good care of us! It was nice to just chill out for a few days and not be on the go. While there, we also went to visit Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, which are just about an hour and a half from Santiago. We stayed a night in Valparaiso. Valparaiso is a lot differnt from Santiago…a lot older and run down, but it also has a lot of character. I really loved Valparaiso because of all it’s character and thought is was a cool city. Viña del Mar is a city just next to Valparaiso, but it’s really different. It’s basically a beach resort style town with lots of big hotels and expensive restaraunts. It’s really pretty though, and it was great to lay on the beach for a day! Matt decided to leave Chile from Valparaiso and went to Mendoza, Argentina from there. I, however, decided to go back to Santiago for a few days and spent two more nights with my friends there. Today I left Santiago and met Matt here in Mendoza, where we are now. Mendoza is cool town, but it’s soooo hot here. It was super hot in Santiago also, but it’s definitely hotter here. Mendoza is famous for producing the majority of Argentina’s wines and there are lots of wineries around to go visit…however it’s so hot, I don’t know if we’ll end up doing any of that. The hostel we’re staying at has a pool (although it’s not much of a pool) and Matt spent the enire last two days he’s been here just hanging out at the hostel at the pool. We’re supposed to be in Brazil by early February, so we’ll probably end up leaving here pretty soon to try to get a little closer to Brazil. Here are some photos from our last week or so.

It turned out that we were actually really lucky that we had to stay in Salta an extra night. We found out that Boca Juniors and River Plate, the two biggest rival soccer teams from Buenos Aires were playing there that night. We went to the stadium and were lucky enough to be able to buy tickets at the last minute. We ended up in the River Plate section just because that was the only place there was room, but it turned out to be great because they beat Boca 3-0. The fans were absoulutely crazy, and it was so much fun to be there! We had been hanging out with these people while we were in Salta and went to the game with them…Lory (England), Hannah (England), Soren and Isben (both from Denmark), and Matt.

Here’s a really blurry picture of the game.

Each time River Plate scored a goal, the fans went SO crazy and started climbing up the fences and stuff. It was a lot of fun to be right in the middle of it all.

Here’s a plaza in Cordoba. Sorry, it’s a pretty boring picture, but I didn’t take hardly any pictures while there for some reason.

Here I am with Nelson (my parents’ good friend) and his daughter Camila. We had just arrived to Santiago, and they cooked a wonderful lunch for us. Ceasar salad and salmon…it honestly was the best meal we had had in a long time!

A street in the center of Santiago.

Another area in the center of Santiago.

Here’s a really nice park called Cerro Santa Lucia in Santiago.

This is Valparaiso. Similar to San Francisco, there are lots of hills there and a lot of really cool old buildings and houses.

There are several (15 still functioning I think) really old “ascensores” (elevators) in Valparaiso that take you up several of the hills and give you excellent views of the city. Here’s one of them that we went up.

Here’s the view from the top.

Up at the top, there were also great views of all the houses built on the sides of the hills. I loved all the old houses…some were super old and run down, others were well kept and really nice.

We decided to walk down the hill rather than ride the ascensor down. We were able to see a lot of really cute streets and cool houses and buildings.

Here’s Matt hanging out on the beach in Viña del Mar. It was kind of cool…while we were lying on there, this guy came up to me and asked if I wanted to get a free massage and be on the evening news. Of course I didn’t turn down a free massage! I got the massage on a chair right on the beach and then the evening news interviewed me. I didn’t get a chance to see if I made the cut for the news that evening though 🙂 .

Here’s another shot of the beach in Viña del Mar. As you can see, there are tons of huge hotels lining the beach.

Last night, I went out with Nelson and the family for my last night in Santiago. From the right is Camila, Nelson, Sergio (Constanza’s boyfriend), and Constanza. Nelson’s wife Carmen and his son Sebastian are living in the U.S. at the moment so they weren’t there. I had a really nice time in Santiago and am glad I was able to visit!

After being in a house for a few days and being able to rest a little, I feel a lot better and feel like I’m up for the next part of this big trip. As I said, we’re now in route to Brazil. One of Matt’s old roommates from Madrid lives on the border of Brazil and Uruguay, so we’re planning to stay with her for a few days when we arrive. I’m definitely looking forward to Brazil and all the beaches! It will definitely be a change for us with the language not being Spanish, but I’m excited to learn a little Portugese. I hope everyone’s well!!!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2006 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.