The Escape from Malargüe, and Santiago Redux

My debit card finally arrived! And the evening it did, I got the f*ck out of Dodge. No offense, Malargüe. You are a charming little town in a truly stunning location, but when Las Leñas closed and bus service to the mountains stopped, my reasons for staying were not many, and with Creepazoid prowling about my reasons for leaving were many.

My card arrived at around noon. I snatched it out of the arms of the FedEx guy, tore the package open, ran to the nearest ATM, and withdrew as much cash as it would let me. Just enough to pay for the hostel stay, not enough to pay for a bus ticket out. So I hit every ATM in town, and then started making an ATM cycle every hour, until finally I was able to pull out more money, enough for the 2am bus ticket to get me out and back to a place with snow.

Elated, I wandered through town, loving everything in sight. I loved the birds. Loved the dirt streets. Loved the buses rolling through town honking their horns and blaring sirens celebrating the return of the high school Judo champions, loved the friendly people, loved that my Spanish had improved to the point where I could sort of talk to people and make myself understood, loved the views of mountains in the distance.

I did a final round of sink laundry, put my clothes out to dry, and treated myself to a fancy dinner ($35 for a three-course meal involving locally-sourced goat meat, pasta, and wine-soaked pears as well as my own personal bottle of wine), spending two hours eating and drinking alone in a state of pensive ecstasy. I returned to the hostel around midnight to a horrible smell, which I traced to the ball of goo on the heater that had once been my ExOfficio anti-microbial underwear. You can't win them all.

The dessert course of my celebratory fancy dinner

My melted panties

At 1:15am, with the taxi I thought I had ordered nowhere to be found, I began the long lurching journey from the hostel to the bus station, rattling down the otherwise silent gravel streets of Malargüe with my 50lb snowboard bag, 40lb backpacking backpack, 20lb work backpack, and a purse slung over my neck full of food and wine for the journey ahead. About 10 minutes in, one of the wheels broke off of my snowboard bag, making the movement even more difficult, and progress far slower than I had hoped. It was exhausting, but I had to make that bus, so rattle and lurch I did, sounding like an earthquake, sweating despite the freezing temperatures in my t-shirt, grunting, lurching, panting, and lurching all the way to the bus stop. I arrived just as the bus was pulling away from the terminal. I dropped my bags and sprinted to the bus, yelling and waving my arms. I caught it, slapping my hands on the doors, the windows, whatever I could reach as I ran alongside. The bus stopped. I showed my ticket and pointed to my bags and the bus driver scolded me (or something, I didn't understand except the tone), but I retrieved my bags, put them on the bus, and collapsed, dripping sweat, into my seat.

Woke up to this view. Not bad.

I arrived in Mendoza at 8am, having almost sort of slept on the bus, and spent the hour between bus connections eating most of the food I had brought with me (since I knew it would be confiscated at the border crossing). Then with significantly less drama than the first departure I got on the second bus for a reverse of the Paso Los Libertadores trip of two weeks prior. Except Chileans are waaaaaay pickier than Argentinians about what is brought into their precious, disease-free, unjustly beautiful country so where the border crossing took about 40 minutes on the way to Argentina, it took close to 2 hours complete with bag searches, luggage scans, and questionings. 

Me, post-pat-down

Portillo ski resort. The U.S. ski team trains here in summer. Poor suckers.

Oh, and as the sole North American on the bus, I was singled out for an on-bus pat down and thorough bag hand search. Racial profiling at its finest: hey light-skinned girl, hand me your passport. Oh you're from the United States? Gruff voice! Stand up! Empty your pockets! Eagle position! Give me your bag! I think the guy was disappointed not to find anything, although I was sweating bullets because I had a pretty rock in one bag pocket that I worried would get me into trouble. But the pretty rock was never found, the one pocket he didn't search. Rock aside, I decided that the special treatment was acceptable. It's only fair that I, racially privileged white blonde girl (the red has been sun-bleached almost completely out of my hair now), be treated in the darker-skinned part of the world the way all too many darker-skinned people are treated when they arrive (and when they live) in the U.S.

Anyhow, I made it safe and sound with no rocks confiscated and no fines levvied and no arrests made back in Santiago, descending into the city just as a squadron of what looked like 20-some F-16s roared in formation overhead in honor of the Armed Forces Day part of the September Fiestas Patrias celebrations.

Fiestas Patrias. Biggest holiday in Chile. All the stores and restaurants were closed and I had eaten all my food.

But it was okay, because I arrived at my hostel (having left the wheel-less snowboard bag in bus terminal storage) to a wonderful group of friends-I-hadn't-met-yet and they fed me in exchange for the bottle of Argentinian wine I had. The conversation ranged from the best places in Chile, to engineering special beer fridges, to safety tips for visiting Brazilian Favelas ("Oh, the people are super nice! I love the Favelas! I hang out there until 3am all the time! Oh yeah, but if you don't speak Portugese and know people there, you'll probably die."), to strategies for the cultivation of soil fungus, to earning a living via travel blogging. I got to my dorm bunk bed and crashed hard, sleeping like the proverbial rock.

Food! Glorious food! And a creep-free hostel! Good folks at the Princessa Insolente Hostel in Santiago.

And the next day, I ate mind-blowingly delicious seafood empanadas (have I said yet how much I love empanadas? mmmmmm empanadas), filled a bag full of more empanada (you can never have too many empanadas, I have determined, but you can always have too few. my stomach thinks I have too few right now), and went to go chase more snow. This time to the Chilean side of the mountains, to Nevados de Chillán, the place I had originally intended to go first before the rain drove me across the Andes to Argentina.

OMG <3 Empanadas!!!

My stomach is growling just looking at this picture. Ohsogood.

And sweet, sweet baby Jeebus, I hit the jackpot.

(but you'll have to wait to hear about my awesome snow week until the next post)

Crossing the Andes, or, Awesome Adventures on the Megabus

I crossed the Andes in a bus, and it was awesome.

We were just barely able to stuff two of us, my snowboards,
and my backpacks into the back of a Santiago taxi on my way
from Ignacio's place to the bus terminal.

To prepare, I spent a final night in Santiago with Ignacio and had my first empanada (I thought they were with cheese and had avoided them, but no! I can eat them! Empanadas are *awesome*). We stayed up until the wee hours of morning drinking wine (of course, when in Chile... the stuff is soooo good and is about the same price as water, so why drink water when I can drink wine?) and having a deep and emotional conversation about my ill-starred love life. I love this about Chileans, at least all of the Chileans I've gotten to know so far. It's like they meet you and instead of shaking hands go straight for the heart. It was a conversation I had been dreading--Ignacio is a mutual friend of someone who I've spent close to a year and a half hoping would be eaten by tigers--but left me feeling strangely lightened.

Lightened and ready to spend 16 hours crossing the Andes by bus! Bus left 9am from Santiago (following an extremely frantic last-minute purchasing of the $160 "Reciprocity Fee" that Argentina charges--the "sorry we're assholes about letting people into the U.S." tax--at a bus station internet cafe), was scheduled to arrive at 5:30pm in Mendoza, Argentina, and then I had another bus from 6:30pm-1:00am to get me to the hostel in Malargüe, Argentina where I had booked 4 nights.

The bus! I was on the upper Peasant Class level, not the lower Royal Suite level. I think I got the better deal: inexpensive and excellent views. Also, the mountain scene on the back is of where I was headed. I took that as a good sign.

View from inside the bus.
Also, that's a lady reading the bible.
People actually do that here.

The bus left from the main Santiago bus terminal and wove its way out of the city, into the countryside, and through the canyons and hills at the feet of the Andes. We passed through at least three villages perched precariously on gully ledges about which I thought, "I want to live here someday." Just me and my goats. Added goat herding in the Chilean Andes to my list of "if science doesn't work out" backup plans.

And then, BAM, the Andes, starting with this incredible pass (Paso Internacional Los Libertadores) that winds up the mountains to the Argentinian border. Winds 29 times up to the Argentinian border. And you pass underneath a bunch of chairlifts (part of the famous Portillo ski resort) on the way up. While researching how to get to Argentina from Santiago, I read blog posts saying "do not attempt this in winter, too scary!" So I was pretty jazzed. It wasn't as scary as I had hoped--and I had great, grow-hair-on-the-chest upper-deck seats--but it was still pretty rad, especially when the bus driver decided to gun it and skip ahead in the line, careening up the hill and around blind curves in tunnels in the lane of opposing traffic.

Paso Internacional Los Libertadores. Do you see that? 29 switchbacks! Those long blocks are all semi trucks! Craziness. And this is the *main route* connecting Santiago and Buenos Aires via Mendoza.

More photos from the Paso Los Libertadores trip in the Photo Album

Gracias por su visita? No, thank you, Chile.

Then there was the border crossing, where we all had to get off the bus, file through a series of lines to check out of Chile and check into Argentina, file back onto the bus, and continue on our merry way.

The other side of the Andes was dry and barren and mountainous and colorful: Death Valley on steroids. Finally we dropped down into the desert plains that are somehow (magic) used to produce grapes for some more excellent red wines, especially Malbec.

When I arrived in Mendoza, I set out to buy an Argentinian phone card, when I had a heart-stopping realization: my debit card was nowhere to be found. After sitting on a park bench for 15 mins collecting myself, I set off to find a place where I could exchange the Chilean pesos I had recently withdrawn (which is probably where I lost the card) to Argentinian pesos. Not much, but enough to hopefully survive a few days. I didn't have time to call my home bank and thought there was a chance it was just hidden somewhere and I'd find it when unpacking, but hours later when I finally got to the hostel in Malargüe, no card. Shit.

Mendoza. Wine and mountains. I like it.

With the help of Google Translate I was able to communicate (at 1am) to the hostel proprietor what had happened. He said "no problem" to letting me pay him for the first two nights and then pay him for the other nights once my replacement card came in.

Little did I know, an "emergency express" replacement card from my bank (BECU, which I'd thought was a great credit union until this happened) wouldn't arrive for another two (? here's hoping...) weeks.

To be continued...