The Andes (11.07 - 13.07)

In the early morning we packed all our stuff and left Hostel Uma for the bus terminal. Thank God that we chose to stay close, because it’s pretty difficult to run around with all the stuff we’re carrying – so much for traveling light, but after all we had to move out completely. The previous evening we booked tickets for Uspallata as well as to Santiago de Chile. If anyone wants to do the same remember that argentine bus companies will be less than helpful, but the Chileans don’t have any problem with it – they will pick you up in front of Uspallata’s police station (you’ll have to pay the full price from Mendoza though).

  The ride to Uspallata is amazing. After some 30 minutes the road starts to ascend and turns into the valley of Rio Mendoza leading upwards into the Andes. The views are breathtaking and it’s only the beginning, further up you will see even more amazing things.  To sleep on this journey is simply a crime, so even though we were tired (the previous night I was writing the tour diary until 2.30 am) we made an effort to stay awake. 

The bus dropped us just in front of Hostel Uspallata, which is situated in beautiful landscape about 7 km away from the town. It was about 10:30 am, the sun was shining and even though we were high up in the mountains it wasn’t cold at all. The hostel was empty, the last guests got into their car and left as we approached. The receptionist was a 50-year-old adorable woman named Rosa. She is really communicative and kind. As soon as we left all our stuff in one of the dorm rooms, we went into the lobby to have a chat with her, sipping on mate. In the end we spent the next 2 hours, while waiting for a bus that would take us to the city. There is no bus stop so you have to wait for the bus on the road. Unfortunately this time it came earlier so we were left dumbstruck in front of the hostel as we were still exchanging tips and tricks with Rosa. Well, what can you do…? We stood out on the road and started hitchhiking.

  

After some 30 minutes we scored a small bus heading to Santiago de Chile, and they took us to the center of Uspallata, where we quickly arranged our laundry and bought tickets to Puente del Inca, further up the mountains. As you can imagine, the trip blew our minds away – I guess the best is just to take a look at the pictures, eve though they will hardy convey the true magnitude of the beauty, splendor and might that the Andes represent.

Soon, that is after another 2 hours, we arrived to Puente del Inca, which lies 8 km further up from Penitentes, where you can ski (if you’re rich enough). Niki’s critical eye concluded that the slope is shit and the snow is old. It’s hard to say now whether she said that only to comfort herself, (since we didn’t have enough cash to cover the skiing trip) or the slope was actually shit.

  Puente del Inca is an extremely small village, consisting of nothing more than a couple of houses, a handcraft bazaar (you can find one next to virtually every tourist attraction in South America), an argentine army base (it must be something like a punishment to be sent there…), and, of course, The Bridge of Inca. First of all try not to imagine a bridge, you know – stones, arcs and so forth. Well, it does have stones, or rocks to be honest, and it does actually have an arc, but what I’m coming at is that it’s not a man-made bridge. It’s a bridge that has sort of hmm… constructed itself naturally. You have Rio Mendoza bubbling several meters down and so it happens that there are some mineral wells there too. And so it happened one day, or – according to one explanation – must have happened, that the low temperatures aided by the mineral wells have resulted in this somewhat uncommon horizontal construction. However according to an Inca legend, it must have been a divine act. The legend says that one day the chief of one Inca tribe got seriously ill. The shaman said that there is one herb that can cure his illness but to find it they would have to go on a long journey. The people really loved their chief so they decided to do their best to help him and set off to find the plant. They walked for many days until they reached an impassable river. They decided to set a camp there, and tried to think of ways to cross the river, they even made long excursions to look for another path, but all that resulted in nothing. One night they went to rest in very dread moods. The Inca gods, seeing that the people really loved their chief, and were desperate to save him, decided to help them, and when the next morning the Incas woke up they saw a bridge, built entirely from rock, stretching over the hatred river. This is how they got to the healing herb and saved the life of their chief.

  In the 1910’ the British came there because they found out of the healing wells and decided to construct a luxurious hotel. The ruins can still be visible today. 20 years later an avalanche came down from the mountains and destroyed it almost completely, save for the small church that stood nearby. That’s all you can see now – an interesting natural phenomenon and a leftover of human interference. All in all Puente del Inca is definitely worth to see. Even more so when you see the amazing beauty of the mountains there. Aconcangua – the highest peak of South America is just 3 km away, but you have to be lucky enough to get there while good weather lasts. If there are any clouds you won’t be able to see the top.

  On our way back we stopped in Uspallata again, first of all because we had to collect our laundry, and also we needed to use internet. Niki managed to create mayhem in the cybercafe that we targeted – she wanted to skype with her father, and virtually all the headsets were broken, so the clerk decided to bring his own laptop and give it to Niki. Isn’t she a sweetheart?

  The next day, Rosa arranged for her cousin to come and take us horseback riding. It was one of the highlights of our stay there. It cost us some 10 USD each, and initially we were a bit put off by the fact that it was to last only an hour, but after we were done, we thanked heavens that we hadn’t decided to ride for more time. As you can imagine we are not quite accustomed to having our bottoms beaten to pulp so all in all one hour was just enough. Curiously, I found it quite easy to steer my animal and enjoyed the ride immensely - perhaps I could only complain that it was rather reluctant to go faster. It was a great experience and we’re going to repeat it, hopefully some time soon.

  In the evening the sky turned grey. After a minute of thoughtful observations of wind, Rosa deducted that it’s going to snow. Indeed, an hour later the mountaintops became blurred and the snow was clearly visible. At about the same time our hostel lost electricity and regained it only for sort periods of time. It was just enough to realize that the border crossing to Chile was closed though. Whether it would be possible to cross the following day was still an open question. In the meantime, the once peaceful hostel became increasingly crowded. Every ten minutes another car would park outside and someone would get out to ask if there were any free rooms left. In an hour the hostel was completely full, and even us had to move to Rosa’s room to make space for guests. We did our best to help her control the situation – she was alone and there was a lot of work to do. After the situation was contained we moved to the kitchen, where a bunch of hippies lit up the fireplace and spent the evening drinking wine.

  The next day we woke up early to reach the police station on time. Our bus to Santiago de Chile left Mendoza around 8 in the morning, so depending on the traffic it would arrive to Uspallata between 10:30 and 11:00. Naturally we didn’t want to be late. In the end it arrived at noon – just in time to save me from Niki’s hysteria… Unfortunately just when we made ourselves comfortable the bus stopped on something resembling a huge car park, lots of other buses and cars were there. The drivers announced that the border crossing was still closed and we had to wait for news. According to them if they wouldn’t have opened it within an hour it wouldn’t have made any sense to go further – after 15:00 the road gets icy and it’s very difficult to cross. Eventually it was our lucky day (at least we thought so) and we moved on. Approaching the border crossing, high up in the mountains, someone started screaming about smoke on the bus. Indeed, something was producing smoke. We stopped and everyone rushed outside, which was a bit difficult, since everyone – ignoring the safety precautions – carried all their belongings along he way. We followed this trend. The most hilarious was to see and older couple stepping down from the bus – the woman was coughing violently, while her husband was shaking his head disbelievingly and trying to light up a cigarette. Apparently he didn’t mind the smoke. After all the drivers informed us that there wasn’t an fire – an extinguisher fell from it’s place and opened releasing that funny powder, that indeed resembles smoke. We were able to resume the journey. 

Getting out of Argentina was easy, although it involves crossing a long tunnel without any ventilation – cars, buses and trucks lined up in a milky fog of pollution. Getting into Chile was a nightmare. We waited for 4 hours on the border before everyone was rushed to form a cue to the various windows where we had to obtain stamps. In the meantime police dogs where sniffing around for drugs, all the bags were x-rayed and some where opened. We had to rewrite our customs declarations, because we had some yerba and spices with us. We forgot to include them in our statements, so if they were found we would have to pay fines.

We got to Santiago at 22:00, as opposed to 16:00 according to the schedule. 

Mendoza (10.07)

The original plan about Mendoza revolved around staying there for a couple of nights. Niki´s plan was even more ambitious as she secretly intended to go skiing in the Andes. The bottom line however, was the fact that we didn’t really want to spend too much money in Mendoza, and we were unable to catch any couch on Couchsurfing. Anyhow we arrived in the afternoon and found a nice and relatively cheap (30 peso / night / person) hostel just next to the bus terminal (it’s called Hostel Uma, if anyone wants to check it out). It’s just a 15-minute walk to the city center, so it ain’t a tragedy. As soon as we unloaded our stuff and caught a breath we headed for a walk there.

We have to admit that Mendoza is a very friendly place, the life flows at a slower pace compared to Buenos Aires, which was a relief. To our surprise it’s also much cleaner. All in all the first impressions were absolutely positive and we wouldn’t mind staying there for a longer time, to work and hang out, just like it Capital Federal. The center is more spacious and greener than that of Buenos Aires (it’s nightmare there), with omnipresent coffee shops, restaurants and pubs. Even though it’s winter people enjoyed their time staying outside, drinking mate or whatever it was they had to drink.

A couple of hundreds meters further you’ll find Plaza Independencia - the central spot of Mendoza. It’s basically a small park with two nice fountains in the middle and a feria artesanal (small stands selling handcraft products). Lot’s of young people sit around on the grass in the midday sun playing guitar, sipping beer and smoking weed. Sweet.

En route to Plaza Independencia Niki popped into a tourist agency to ask about skiing possibilities and emerged with a shameless grin on her face. “Baby, how much are you willing to spend on my skiing?” I heard. “Nothing” was the obvious reply, since I can’t ski and in case she really pulled it off I would have to find something else to do. According to Niki a whole day on a slope would cost her (us) something around 200 peso, which really wasn’t that bad, considering that it would cover transport, ski pass and equipment rental. So we stared thinking about it more seriously and doing more research around Mendoza. The results weren’t too encouraging. In the end the total amount reached 300 peso, because the high season had started just 2 days before and some of the agencies where not fully aware of the prices. So we gave up the idea, and since there wasn’t much else for us to do in the city we came up with the idea to go up to the mountains and see what’s up there. Our destination was Uspallata, a small town at the altitude of about 4000 meters, and on the way to the skiing slopes as well as to the border crossing with Chile.

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San Luis (08.07 - 09.07)

As we mentioned our first stop was San Luis. Sorry to write this a bit late – we’re already in Mendoza, but you know how it is – sometimes we’re lazy, sometimes there’s no internet, and sometimes it’s there, but rather reluctant to co-operate. In San Luis we stayed in a small hostel called (of all things) San Luis Hostel. The staff is very friendly and we really came to like them a lot, even though we spent only two nights there. The owner of the place is called Miguel and he helped us a lot figuring out the bus timetables when we were planning our trips around San Luis. He has a huge knowledge about the place, and has traveled through Europe when most of us were putting together Lego blocks. Curiously the only country he hasn’t visited is Poland and he’s had nightmares about it too. The hostel has two large dorm rooms, but unfortunately men and women are separate. Nevertheless it was not a big obstacle for us – after all we only slept there. Yes, honestly.

On the first day we went to a small town called Potrero de los Fumes, which lies around an artificial lake in hills surrounding San Luis. We set off for a small hiking trip and soon we found signs pointing towards something called Salto de Moneda. Since it implied that it was a waterfall we went for it, even though it said that it was a private property and admission fee of 6 peso (2 USD) was to be paid. Since there was no one to collect it and the gate was wide open we assumed that we would just sneak in, but after a couple hundred meters we stumbled upon an older dude who was apparently cleaning the path and he charged us ruthlessly. Anyhow he was a nice bloke so we paid gladly. After another couple of hundreds of meters we arrived to the waterfall, which at this time of year looked kind of miserable, but all in all it was a good day, and the small hiking trip was a good prelude to what was coming the next day – after all we’re a bit out of shape, especially Niki was quite skeptical about climbing hills. You know – there’s no way to access it with a car.

When we got back we tried to look for a place with Wi-Fi access, but apparently all the internet in the town decided to call it a day so we’ve turned our steps to the closest market where we stocked up on wine, argentine salami, cheese and olives and decided to head back to our hostel to catch some rest. It turned out to be a good move. After preparing a small snack, and playing some backgammon (Niki – Marcin: 0 -1) we sat down for a chat with a friendly fellow called Daniel. Soon enough he turned out to be a tourist guide, more importantly residing very close to Parque Nacional de Sierra de las Quijadas - a place that we wanted to see, but were unable to obtain any competent information about, and that includes the city’s tourist information office. The problem with Quijadas is that there’s no commonly available way there. One would think that the town of San Luis would provide means of transportation to the most beautiful place in a 100 km perimeter, but no. After much hollering about the situation of tourism in San Luis Daniel offered us a trip to Quijadas – one that would cost us 60 peso (20 $) / person, against 120 (60 $) / peson offered by one of the tourist agencies we visited. It was all pretty much DIY. Here’s how to do it: get to the San Luis bus terminal at 7.00 am and buy tickets for the bus to San Juan (18 peso), telling them to drop you off at the entrance to the park. Pay the fee (20 peso for foreigners, 12 peso for residents) and walk 6 km to the actual valley, which you want to see. Now, if you’re lucky you won’t have to walk the whole distance. We didn’t. Three kids from San Luis (more about them soon) picked us up on the way and since they didn’t have any place in the car (pick up truck) they placed us on the door of the back compartment. You know how kids are… They soon forgot that we’re sitting there in the back, and pretty much floored it, so in several moments we felt that we were about to end our glorious trip rather abruptly. Soon we got to Claudia’s (Daniel’s sister, more about her soon too) camping site and our guide came rushing to us, not only because he missed us, but also because we wanted to ask the Three Kids From San Luis if they needed a guide. Unfortunately the Three Kids From San Luis decided that the offered price was far to high, and decided to explore the valley alone. Now come on, is 30 peso really that much for a someone’s whole day of work?! (A rhetoric question.) Claudia made us some sandwiches and we took off into the valley. Already from the top of the descent the view is spectacular, but what awaits you at the end of the journey is pure glory, well worth of the proverbial blood, sweat and tears. Well, we didn’t bleed, nor did we cry, but we definitely sweat a lot, and remember it’s winter here, even though the temperatures might testify to the opposite (23ºC – T-shirts, in the summer temperature can reach as high as 50ºC).

The walk is about 4.5 km one way, with a joyful twisty descent to the valley followed by a walk along the dry riverbed that ends with arrival to the 200 m high walls and towers forming miniature canyons with amazing views. On the way Daniel kept us entertained with stories about the history of the valley, it’s flora and fauna, and the 13 year old record of his work there as a guide. He had really many interesting things to say and we would wholeheartedly encourage anyone going to San Luis to look up Daniel and hire him as a guide – you will really learn a lot about the situation of the region and the situation of the people living there, among other things that we won’t bother to talk about here, it would simply take too long. On our way back we managed to arrange a ride back to San Luis when we encountered another guide leading a different group into the canyons, and some 20 minutes later, while we were resting during the climb back to the camping site, Daniel pointed his hand to a tiny black spot on a hillside some 800 m from where we were standing. What happened was that The Three Kids From San Luis Who Didn’t Want To Pay A Guide And Decided To Explore The Valley Alone ended up trapped on a very dangerous slope with no optimistic views neither for way down nor up. Daniel grabbed his radio and notified the park rangers that some kids are off the trail and seem pretty much trapped, and in the meantime filled us in, that this happens quite a lot, partly because the people from San Luis feel they are smarter than everybody else when it comes down to their natural heritage, and partly because the rangers are a bit lazy to do their job. The situation is pretty complex, so we’ll once explain it in more detail next to a beer when we get back to Europe, but for now it’s enough to say that it’s not Daniel’s job to bring the “brave ones” safely back home, although he used to do it until he twisted his ankle badly during one of the rescue missions that he doesn’t even get paid for. After returning to the camping we spent the next hour talking about many different things, sipping on mate and digging in choripans (sausage + bread, not hot dogs!) that we received from a nearby picnic. Daniel is a really good guy, who not only showed us one of his beloved places but also took us to his home and introduced us to his relatives, more precisely to his sister Claudia and her four children, who have escaped from the city life to live peacefully (though modestly) in the middle of nowhere. He is building a house for his sister’s family there, and when he’s done he plans to go to Europe to work in Andorra. We hope to see him one day, perhaps visiting Budapest, if not sooner. Either way, if anyone is planning to go to San Luis before November drop us a message – Daniel is the best guide you’ll get there. After returning to San Luis we took a short walk to an all-you-can eat place recommended by him, where we obviously ate all we could for about 6 USD per head, plus beverages. During the meal both of us shared insightful details about all sorts of pains caused by the journey to Quijadas. Interestingly, Niki complained about pain in her bottom, which raised a question what parts of her body she actually uses to walk… We had a good laugh about it and went to bed early that night. The following day in the morning we had to report to the bus terminal early in order to catch a ride to Mendoza.

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European Gauchos Reloaded!

Hi everyone!

 We are back on the road again, so it’s certainly time to be back on-line with our tour diary.

 Some two weeks ago we’ve finally brought ourselves to file our resignation, cash in on the paychecks and prepare to leave Buenos Aires. This plan had been lingering in the back of our heads for some time, we’ve steadily grown a bit tired of the big city and the opportunities – or lack thereof – that it had for us. Our business plans didn’t quite work out, which by the way is a story to be told in the future, and we had come to realize that is was virtually impossible for us to travel around the continent while working in Buenos Aires – the amount of vacation provided by the argentine labor law is by far too short and so is the money earned. The only way was to withdraw and adjust the plans accordingly. I gave up on my somewhat ambitious plans to study sound engineering here, however it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to pick up on them somewhere in the future. When? Who knows… Definitely not in the close future. For now we’re just going to focus on getting to know South America.

 Before we left we had to say good-bye to all the good folks we’ve met during our stay here. As there was quite an impressive amount of them it resulted in a week of alcoholic binge of farewell parties. We’ll soon provide you with visual examples of how it looked like. Even though we’ve done this so many times in the past, it was difficult for us to leave all of our friends behind. During the 10-month of our stay in Buenos Aires we met a lot of people and most of them became our close friends, especially for Niki who – as some may already know – is an extremely social animal. She was even pondering possibilities of postponing our leave, but it would have only been a cheap trick to fool us. So – we left.

 The idea is to reach Bogotá (Colombia, for those not too keen on geography) sometime in the end of October. It’s not an overly ambitious plan in the terms of time planning, mind you. It’s plenty of time to reach our target, and in fact we want to take it the easy way. No rush, no deadlines. The end-of-October thing is merely a calculation – it may be faulted…  Quite frankly it probably is. To sketch the route (we’ll improvise on the way): San Luis – Mendoza – Santiago de Chile – Viña and Valparaiso – San Juan (that’s back to Argentina) – La Rioja – Catamarca – Tucuman – Salta – Jujuy – Bolivia (that’s where we’ll start to improvise) – Peru – Ecuador – Colombia. As we travel and meet people we get more and more of a picture how the later stages of this travel are going to look like but we’re not going public about it just yet. Since we’re a bit unpredictable it safer not to say too much in advance.

 You may be wondering why we chose to stop in Colombia – the Mecca of cocaine junkies, drug cartels and home to the (in)famous FARC, the most dedicated guerillas in South America. First of all, it is anticipated that we’ll run out of funds when we reach Colombia. Secondly our dear friend Ben is there, helping out his brother Julien to run the bar, that Julien opened recently. If everything goes well we hope to be able to stay at Ben´s / Julien´s place long enough to get back on our feet, find a job etc.  Don’t ask us what we’re about to do after that – we have no idea. We’ll just improvise, as usual.