The adventure started on a lovely Tuesday afternoon, Katie (my roommate), and Adrielle a friend of ours got on a crazy long bus ride to Santiago, Chile. The guy that worked on the bus was nice though and put English subtitles on the movies that were dubbed in Spanish.
We got to Santiago and immediately jumped on a bus to Valparaiso, by the time we got there it was getting late and had started to rain. We grabbed a taxi and went to our hostel, which started off rather creepy, the taxista told us that we were not in a good area, and there wasn't even a sign a on our hostel, just a sticker for hostelbooker.com, so we were worried. But Gustavo (the owner) answered the door and we could see that the walls were all painted bright colors and were covered in art work. It ended up being an amazing place to stay! (Definitely recomend NuevaMente if you go to Valpo.). We met a nice Canadian named Nick, we all went out to grab some supper around 9, which is early for Buenos Aires, but is apparently late in an ocean town in Chile.
We wook up at a decent hour and ate
some breakfast and then ventured down to the Ocean. Katie had never seen the Pacific, so that was fun! Then we ate some amazing street food! I love the ridiculously amazing and cheap meat on a stick! I wandered away from Katie and Adrielle to get another sopapilla (sp?), and came back with meat on a stick and a new scarf as well!! (left).We then went on the craziest bus ride of our lives. Valparaiso is a town full of hills and the bus to Pablo Neruda's house goes up the hills, and down the hills, and the drivers all drive super fast,
we were falling over, because the bus was packed. It was hilarious! But we had no idea where we were actually going and ended up passing his house, but the bus driver was either yelling at us to get off, or was being nice and telling us we were dumb. Still not sure which it was! Then to La Sebastiana, one of three of Pablo Neruda's houses in Chile. We visited all of them! Then we wandered down the gazillion and a half staircases.... my legs hurt so bad!Next day was crappy and rainy, so we jumped on the bus to go to La Isla Negra, not actually an island, in fact nothing is realy in this town except for one of Pablo's other houses... It was beautiful though. Right on the ocean... so pretty!
Next day was rainy as well, but we went to Vina del Mar to see the beaches, which were closed, since it is winter down here... We went to a museum where they had shrunken heads!!! I was really excited! Adrielle and Katie were grossed out... They also had one of only five sculptures from Easter Island that aren't actually on the island. It was cool.
The next day we went to Santiago. It was our only day in Santiago, but we saw Pablo Neruda's house, La Chascana, of course!! Can't miss the third one!! Took the funicular which goes up this huge hill where you get to see how big Santiago actually is. As well as the Andes mountains, which I still loved at this point. Only to loathe the next day...
And the worst part of the entire trip, which elongated our trip by two days. We got to the bus station around 10, for our 10:30 bus... only to find it out had been cancelled!! Because of snow that closed the pass. And that we would have to pay more money to wait ten hours in the Santiago bus station to go on a 22 hour bus ride to Neuquen way far South in Patagonia, to then wait four hours in a bus station there, to then get on a 16 hour bus ride to finally get back to BsAs. I am therefore extremely upset with the Andes at the moment. I also missed two more days of class and the bus was freezing and there were barely any movies and if there were they were not good.
It was definitely a good trip though, I needed to get out of the city!! And why not go to Chile?!? Definitely love Valparaiso, it's so pretty!! I will have to go back!!
