rakish richard's rants...

Don't Cry For Me...

Loyal Readers,

By hokey Santiago, there's a lot to catch up on... I write today from Santiago Chile, where we've spent a great few days looking around in preparation for our rapid ascent to nearly 4000m flying to La Paz on Wednesday. We last left you awaiting word of Cordoba, which held us in thrall for 5 days, while we were still bang smack in the middle of Argentina.

We were staying at a Hostelling International place there, very large and for the first time in part populated by some English speakers. Cordoba is a university town, through and through. Of the population of 1m, almost a third are students. The big claim to fame is that the Jesuits (those crafty busy folk you heard about earlier) founded the first university in Argentina there in the 17th century, and it's still considered very prestigious to study there today. It's very liberally dotted with churches (over 40 within the central city alone), laid out in a grid (surprise surprise), and chock full of bookshops to service the huge student population. There's a lot of good modern architecture there too, from the redevelopment of the Capuchino Chapel, to the rocking art museum, which are both worth a visit.

You won't be surprised to know that we usually slept too late to catch breakfast in the hostel, but quickly found Cafe Quixote, and enjoyed their Super Lomo four days in a row. Fuelled by these mighty carb and salt batteries we had a good wander around the centre of town. The Jesuit Block, the modern name for the original Jesuit university, is one of the attractions in town, and we took a little tour around there with the highly recommended Ignacio as a guide. As it's low season for us westerners here, we were the only two people he took round, and there was much yakking and asking of questions as we had a look through the complex. They had a huge collection of ancient manuscripts, including a very rare complete volume of the Polyglot Bible. Now, we loves ourselves some good books, and some of them were almost 500 years old. What we saw however was only about 1/5th of the total the Jesuits possessed, the rest being destroyed when they were unceremoniously booted out of the country in the late 18th century. The tour was crowned with a trip to the church, which despite some looting early in its history still has an amazing wooden vaulted ceiling, hand build by a Flemish boat builder. Muy fantastico!

We also took a little trip out to Alta Gracia, to take in (more) Jesuit ruins, and see the house Che Guevara lived in until his teenage years. The ruins were, as always, lovely and ancient, but Che's house was fascinating. I struck my best pose next to his bust, but it's harder than you think to capture that whole revolutionary spirit in just a look. I need more practice... Loads to learn about him tho, which I didn't have any idea about. Good to see lots of cool memoriabilia, his letters, and his passport from when he snuck into Bolivia disguised as a bald bespectacled civil servant. A great start to his mission, but we all know how that one ended...

We caught the local bus back to Cordoba and boarded our overnight bus (another mighty semi-cama) for Mendoza, arriving pretty fresh and ready. We wandered 10 minutes to Hostel Lao, and enjoyed a super relaxing wait in their garden while our room was cleaned up for us to check in. A good vibe abounded from the moment we arrived, they had a couple of very eccentric dogs, great staff, a big yard, and the kicker for us - hammocks - check out Ana kicking back on one of the numerous afternoons spent in them. The dogs were Astor and Bambina, the former has a dangerous and tiring addiction to fetch, and the latter has a similar affinity for plastic bottles. Strange animals, but really nice to hang with some dogs that are guaranteed free of rabies!

First too, was us mateying up with a couple of English blokes, with whom we basically went on a 48 hour 'date' with, hanging out for lunch and dinner, then going on the infamous wine/bikes tours. We had a scorching day, and managed to get through a couple of wineries, an olive oil factory, and a liqueur and chocolate factory. Visits to each of these entail a quick walk around, and the compulsory 'tasting'. Mendoza is the heart of the Argentinian wine industry, and we scratched only the surface of the surface. So weary were we that we had to stop for 3 hours at one of them just to make sure the wine was good enough to accompany my lunch (slow roasted strips of beef in a red wine broth, I'm working hard for you sinners out there...) At the end of the day we had to catch the bus back to Mendoza town, and while we've struck several systems for the ticketing over here, common to all of them is the reluctance of anyone to break your notes for change, which is needed for the bus driver. While no-one will break a note, you miraculously find that change appears if you buys something. In the end we rustled up fares for four of us, but we brought home a miniature tub of ice cream, some tomato puree, and quite a few bottles of miscellaneous soft drinks.

Anyway, we ended up spending 5 nights in Mendoza, so happy were we with the hostel, and when there wasn't an activity for us, we would happily spend a few hours reading until the free (!!) wine came out at 8pm. We met a lot of good folks in Mendoza, and collected some good travel tips for down the line. Hard to beat was the Florida retiree who has visited 131 countries. Interesting tales, but proof that no amount of travel can necessarily make you interesting. Our last outing from Mendoza was some horse riding in the Andes, a couple of hours out of town. We were a pretty small group, only 6 of us in the morning, and just Ana and I in the afternoon (oh, the joys of the off season), and the experience was only outweighed by the concentrated bruising in undesireable places the next day. We saw our first condors, grey foxes, jackrabbits (much bigger than you think), and a lot of local dogs, who followed us the whole way. We were wined and dined in the garden with endless pieces of steak, took far too many photos (I could start a periodical on cactii alone now...) and came back to the hostel for another evening yarning and enjoying the free wine. It went pretty well with the first presidential debate, not nearly as bitter as I was hoping. Obama wiped the floor with that automaton McCain, but what would I know...

Rather reluctantly we left Hostel Lao, farewelled Argentina, and made a day crossing over the Andes to Santiago. We were considering taking the night bus, for obvious reasons, but are really glad we didn't as there's some scenery through there that truly knocks your socks off. I've seen the odd mountain range in my day, but the scale of these puppies is really just enormous. To see them covered in snow, with the decrepit and decaying old rail line running through was a surprise highlight before our arrival in Santiago. After a couple of hours going through the border we made a rapid descent down the Chilean side through endless switchbacks with an uncomfortably small amount of clearance between the side of the tires and a sheer cliff. Pulled in to the bus station rather happy with ourselves, jumped in a cab, and checked ourselves in at EcoHostel, which has been a welcome and relaxing home for the last 2 nights.

Santiago's a really lovely city, from what I've seen. This has been helped by once again meeting some great folk (thanks to Jan and Nadine from Germany, pleasantly crazy and great fans of NZ), a large barbeque on our first night, and the Andes just sitting there in the background, looming over the city. We took a wander around, climbing Santa Lucia to look over the city, and on our last day here today we took a little turn over the hills to Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar. Valparaiso is awesome, covered in murals and impressive graffiti. As it's built on a series of steep hills, it's covered in funicular cablecars all around 120 years old creaking up and down the hills. Vina Del Mar is pretty scenic too, competing with Valparaiso in that it has the lovely beaches that Santiagans flock to on their holidays. One bay is filled with apartments that step up the hills, giving everyone a great view over the sea and back to Valparaiso, while the next takes a more conventional approach, with tall buildings incrementally blocking out the people behind, leading to even taller buildings in the next wave and so on. Shame to see such a good idea beaten out by nasty architects with their grandiose ideas of building tall (I jest, I surely jest...). The beach was however amazing, and we got a particularly large dose of penguins and sea lions, as well as a few more succulents and cactii to add to my odd collection.

So, it's 9:30pm here, and we have to leave the hostel at 3am to get our flight up to La Paz. It's gonna be quite a big day, and altitude will undoubtedly take its toll. Thanks heaps for the comments you've posted, and I've updated the Iguacu post with some pics for your perusal. Take care out there, and next time I post we'll be somewhere higher than Mount Cook. Time to test the beard in the field...

A

posted by Arch @ 8:44 PM