The rain that Jack mentioned in our last blog, continued until our bus pulled out of the station, so we didn't see the lakes of Bariloche nor Argentina's greatest view but the chocolate supermarket made up for it-at least for me anyway, it was amazing! Bariloche was full of cake shops and other smaller chocolate shops and even an Irish pub named "The Shamrock-I am a Unicorn" I think something got lost in translation there....
A 19 hour long bus took us into Mendoza, do not travel with "Andesmar" if you ever take that trip. Mendoza had a lovely city centre, its Argentina's wine district and a good base for trips into the Andes. We arrived early on a Sunday morning but booked a bus straight out again that night, the wine tours were expensive and we didn't have enough time to take a tour into the mountains, we needed to keep moving to see more of Chile and Bolivia before joining our tour group in La Paz. Mendoza on a Sunday was dead, luckily there were a few bars and cafes open and it was hot and sunny which made the wait for the 11pm bus a bit easier.
Our bus arrived in Viña del Mar, Chile the next morning, so that was two nights of sleeping on buses, not fun... but Viña`s warm sea air made everything better. I have a very vague memory of crossing the boarder, it took 3 hours, from 3am to 6am and it was freezing cold. The whole process was pretty inefficient and when I woke up in Viña it honestly felt like a dream, but hey we had our passport stamps and were good to go. Viña del mar was busy, its a popular holiday spot for locals, and had all the attractions of a beach resort. Chile made me instantly happier, I found the people more friendly and we had healthy food at last! Argentinean was meat and chips and more chips and sugar coated everything, but in fairness our Spanish might not have been good enough to order any veggies and we didn't really stay in accommodation where we could cook.
We spent just one night in Viña then took the 10 minute metro to Valparasio, its a port town and stretches high into the mountains, it may be a place you either love or hate. We loved it. Its so colourful the street art is amazing. It was a long, steep and very hot walk up to out hostel, but very much worth it, the best place we had stayed in so far. We spent three nights here, walking the irregular laid out streets taking in the colours. Ascensores or street elevators helped cut out some of the hills. The first one took us the the Navel museum, it was beautifully painted with a kind of cosmic design-which was clever, it hid the fact that it was actually an old shed on wheels. The Navel museum was pretty impressive and it had a model of the capsule used to rescue the Chilean Miners. Valparasio has the highest rate of unemployment in Chile, it was an obvious contrast from Viña, where horse and carriages took rich holiday makers through the town, in Valparasio horses were used on the main roads to take food to market.
From here we travelled to La Serena, again on a night bus. We were heading for San Pedro de Atacama and La Serena was an attractive stop along the way but awkward bus times meant we arrived there at 5 am and left again at 5 am the next day. So 24 hours in La Serena, nothing opens early so I walked through most of the dead town seeing only a very early morning workers, the centre was nice and it had a great market but we didn't venture out to the beach, mainly because it was far and we got a bit lost! Our hostel owner was lovely, we felt bad that we couldn't converse with him, it was the first place we had stayed where no one spoke English so it was a bit of a challenge.
We were up at 4am and onto the best bus so far to San Pedro de Atacama. A long journey again of 18 hours but the view of the ocean to the left and the edges of the Atacama desert on the right made it a spectacular drive.
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