We left our fantastic hostel in Santiago and made it to the underground, and a few minutes later we’d bought a bus ticket and were on the bus to Valparaiso! As we’d found in Brazil, the buses were amazingly great and I quickly slept the journey away giving James a chance to read!
Off the bus with the help of a really friendly english speaking girl we found where to book our tickets for Mendoza, and had the fun task of buying tickets with someone who didn’t speak a word of english! Thankfully my phrasebook spanish got us through, we are really looking forward to our course and being able to say more than the very basic!! With a little more help we found a bus stop that we hoped was heading in our direction, hopped on and managed to get off pretty close to where we were supposed to! We then got to the ‘Ascensor Concepción’, which was basically like a really really old tram that goes up hills! So that made life a lot easier for us with our rucksacks!! Wandered around the little streets for a while, taking us right past our hostel! But we found it in the end, looked very similar to the derelict type buildings around but inside was great and a really friendly guy ran it!
We then spent the rest of the day wandering around, seeing some sites, the port, big impressive buildings, all the usual! But the hills surrounding the port were fantastic, so colourful, tons of great graffiti, murals, and mosaics, we absolutely loved it!! so that’s where we spent most of our time! We were really good and walked far to a supermarket to pick up some cheap chicken, lemon and salad and for just over 1pound picked up a bottle of chillian wine! Sorted! Back to our funny little hostel with the spanish guys, and met 2 irish girls that were staying as well.
The next day we explored every last street we hadnt wandered around, took more pictures, stubbed my toes on my death trap flip flops, had an amazing cup of tea and piece of lemon cake in a great little cafe and enjoyed the city until late in the afternoon when we went back to collect our bags, and successfully navigated the train to get us to the next town, and then found the bus station :) Waited a while, and just about got by with our minimal spanish! Met a couple from scotland and peru! And waited with them while our bus was an hour late in a MANIC terminal filled with scouts!! Made the bus though for the fun journey through the andes and a 2hr long border crossing (at 4am!) to Mendoza…..
The many pictures can be found here, we’ve definitely got some all time favourites in this folder! Will upload the rest when get to BA.
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