viña del mar, mendoza, 0,35kg of apples

valaparaiso is not far from viña del mar, which is where monica's family lives, so we spent a day in their pool and wandering the streets. the next day we found a beautiful part of valparaiso where there was a huge amount of amazingly cool graffiti (photos are coming, and how do you spell graffiti?).

valparaiso

theeen we took a bus back to santiago and from there across the border to the argentinian mendoza. the bus we took drove over night, through the andes, and the view was magical: dark looming mountains with gleaming snow caps... aaahh...

we arrived at about four in the morning and were absolutely dead tired. due to our lack of sleep we figured it would be a good idea to take taxis 6km outside of town to a camping place which was already filled with kids. which we did. and surprise surprise: it was far away and full of kids. and all the others were closed.

so we decided never to make decisions if we've had less than six hours of sleep (which could make you ask if this was a viable decision to make, since by this time we still hadn't gotten any sleep - but that would just get complicated). we figured we'd take the bus back into town get off at a random stop and crash at the first hostel we see. which we did, and it worked magnificently. we happened to land in a hostel right in the middle of beautiful, tree-lined-streeted, hanoi-like, park-filled and sunny-hot mendoza. so we spent the day enjoying the parks and eating a lot.

the next day we did a bike-wine-tour which was delicious and fun. yay! and a chocolate factory and an olive oil factory was part of our tour as well. mmmm...
when we went to return the bikes, the owners took a great liking to charles (carlito) and so they invited us for a bottle of wine and some mate (argentinian tea). we also got to admire their parrot - which has a hilarious and horrifying fake evil belly laugh.

the next day we took the bus back over the border, and i was arrested. well, not really, but taken in for questioning and made to pay a fine. for two apples. as i hadn't declared them (but WHO declares stuff at a border!?! and i'd wanted to eat them for lunch... damn...). i hope this is the last time i pay 25euros for 0,35kg of apples. the apples, btw, are being sent to a chemical lab for investigation. i seem to be a wanted criminal in chile.

mendoza

after the seven hour exciting bus trip, we had some dinner and immediately got on another bus, this time for 14hr. which brought us to puerto montt. a cementy, gray, sea-side, fish-smelling city. we're going to rent a car and go look at national parks and penguins over the next week. yay for penguins! :)

pictures will come eventually... they take sooo long to upload.