Crossing the Andes: BA to Santiago

Back in Santiago after a day trip to Valparaiso; Valpo as the locals call it. Off to the Grande Norte tomorrow – working my way upto the Peruvian border 2000km away…

The bus to Mendoza was a super-cama and was great. Seats like business-class that reclined all the way and a service that began with brandy and aperitifs and worked its way to dinner and wine, coffee and finally liquers. The trip across Argentina was uneventful – just a lot of pampa dotted with uninteresting towns. An interesting point is that all distances in Argentina are measured from BA (a la Roma!). Also highways have not just maximum but also minimum speed limits – which varied from 50 to 60kmph. Reached Mendoza in the morning with no specific plan. Took a taxi into town after a long wait at the taxi rank; tried my luck with a hotel – but found it was fully booked. Decided to push on to Santiago. Mendoza is a pleasant enough town with leafy cobbled roads and many cool, inviting and lush parks but it didn’t do anything for me. Had a leisurely breakfast, wrote out a few postcards and then spent another 30 minutes trying to locate a cab (confirmed I was right in pushing on!) – managed to get onto the 1330 bus to Santiago.

Thought it was a 4-5 hour drive but discovered it was 7 hours! Got talking (Inglesi+Espanyol) with a Chileno who was sitting next to me. He was a surveyor – who had spent a lot of time in mines including Chiquicamata in the Atacama – the world’s largest open-pit mine. He typically spent 10 days every fortnight in Santiago and 4-5 days in Mendoza (his wife was Argentine). He’d been doing this for 5 years. He too promptly pulled out a photo of his family and showed it to me. He seemed particularly proud of his daughter. She was finishing uni next year – doing something in agricultural/biochemical engineering (at this point neither English nor Spanish worked!). He said his daughter could get a good job in Oz and that there were many Chilenos already there. He and his wife planned to travel next year (Europe, maybe Australia?) after her graduation.

The trip to Santiago involved crossing the Andes – and they were magnificent in their desolation and bleakness. It was in this remote rugged region that a Uruguayan plane crashed in 1972 – leading to one of the greatest dramas of human survival. The road passes through some of the world’s most isolated terrain – and is a mosaic of burnt brown, grey and black with a dirty autumn snow on the towering mountain tops. My Chileno friend (naturally) pointed out places where petroleum had been found and that the tiny railway hugging the mountains around us was built by the British – trust the mad Brits! It linked Los Andes in Chile to Mendoza and was built to haul mineral ore and coal. The railroad is not used any more – the Andes saw to that with a series of avalanches and earthquakes. In fact, in parts, the track is completely covered by rockfalls.

The Chilean border post is at the highest point in the mountains and I soon realised why the trip takes 7 hours. It’s a tedious border crossing involving trudging along to 3 checkpoints; one for an entry stamp, one for a customs stamp and one to scan all our luggage for organic matter. After the Chilean post, there are a series of hair-pin bends (I counted 27 in a row) to get us back near sea-level. As in Patagonia, the Chileans side seemed more fertile while the Argentine side was bleak and sparse. The Andes seem to block anything that even looks like a raindrop! Got into Santiago at around 8pm local time – Chile had just moved an hour back from DST. Got a nice shot of the evening sun reflecting off a Santiago chawl.

13th was a quiet day in Santiago – went to Providencia, the biz district where the expats and yuppies hang out. Naturally, similar in feel to Palermo in BA.

Valparaiso is a 90 min bus ride from Santiago. It’s a quirky city – and that feeling sets in as soon as you step off the bus and see those green trolley buses trundling along the busy streets. Took one these across the city to the western end – where the main port is. And then took one of the city’s 15 ascensors (lifts) up one of its three dozen hills. Valparaiso straddles some 40 hills over a spectacular curve of the bay. Its colourful houses are perched everywhere on these hills – it’s almost as if the city is falling into the ocean.

Felt like a kid – rushing up and down the city on those ascensors; up El Peral; down Concepcion. Up and down Artillera and Baron…Hiked around one of the neighbourhoods, Cerro Alegre – those brightly painted houses and little gardens full of flowers against the backdrop of crowded hills made for a pretty picture. Took a collectivo to La Sebastiana – Neruda’s Valpo house. Bright, airy and filled with his aesthetic of seemingly different pieces all fitting together. Had a lunch of salad and coffee at a little café with a homely feel (later discover this is a trademark of Valpo). The waitress was chatty and the manager came round from his table where – like the King – he was counting all his money; just to say Hola…and enquire about the commie symbol on my t-shirt (was wearing the shonky green t I picked up at Chatuchak market in Bangkok). As we drove back to S’go, the evening fog was rolling in from the sea and soon we seemed to be enveloped in clouds – surreal feeling. Valpo is the kind of city I could have spent a couple of more days exploring but I had a date with Mamalucca observatory in La Serena the next day…

Photo albums for this post available at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/BuenosAiresMendozaAndOverTheAndesToSantiago and http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/Valparaiso