Travel Blog: Day 89

Sorry that it's been so long - almost three weeks. I was kind of procrastinating. The problem is, that writing a blog post just gets more work the longer you wait.

Well here we go. Last thing I mentioned was that I got to Bariloche. I had some good days there. The area strongly reminded me of the Alps. Lots of snow covered mountains, lakes and lots of swiss or mid-European

architecture. In Bariloche I also met and Argentinia from Mendoza by the name

of Lucas. One day we rented a car and drove around the seven lakes, constantly stopping at all the wonderful viewpoints.

After Bariloche I took a very comfortable 21 hour bus ride to Cordoba. They ha

d warm food, good movies and even wine and whisky. Once in Cordoba I did not really do a lot. Actually I just did not find a lot of things to do. I walked through the city plenty of times. Went to an art museum and ate lots of ice cream. One day I wanted to

go swimming but the minute I stepped out the hostel it started to rain and it didn't stop for the rest of the day. But in Cordoba I met Olli again - the English guy I have mentioned before. We played some cards, cooked with each other (well, most of the times I just ate what he cooked) and had some good time.

My next stop was Mendoza - Argentinia's main wine region. I spend some more money on the hostel because I really wanted to have a pool. It turned out to be a good decision because the weather was really hot (35 Celsius / 95 Fahrenheit). On my first full day I went with some people out to the wine area and rented some bikes. We hit three or four bodegas and tasted some of the local wine.

Most of it was pretty good. We also got a really interesting tour at one of the places. It was just strange to see that the vineyards were not on small hills li

ke they are in Germany. Here they were just flat - like fields.

I also spent Christmas in Mendoza (I am talking about the 24th). I spent most of the day at the pool and at night there was a big BBQ. For me it was a strange setting for Christmas. I did not really get into the mood. The dinner was tasty though and later at night most of the people went to a club. By now I really should have figured out that I am not the club kind of person. In summary the Christmas was pretty weird. I missed family and also (a little suprising) the cold weather. I had a better day on the 26th when Lucas invited me to play football with his friends. We played for three hours and after that we had a great BBQ. It was just a perfect setting with all those nice Argentinian people who invited me into their home and treated me as a honored guest!

On the 27th I took a bus to Chile. The ride went through the Andes and there was some beautiful scenery. Too bad the border crossing took us about 2 hours because every piece of luggage was taken off the bus and put through one of those airport X-ray scanners.

But eventually I arrived safely in Santiago and found my hostel. I had only one full day there but this one was really fun. I met "Baba" at the hostel, a 40 year old German who has been travelling for 20 years. He has been to Santiago several times and knows

the city pretty well. So he played the tour guide for a Brazilian guy, two Australian girls and me. We took a walk through the city, starting in Bellavista - Santiago's bohemian quarter - and continuing through Chinatown until we got to the market area. There are so many different markets in a rather small area: fish market, flower market, vegetable market, meat market....

He then took us to some Chilenian beerhall for drinks and food. We each had a "terremoto" (earthquake) which is white wine with pineapple ice cream and fernet. Half a liter of that makes you really tipsy. So afterwards he took us for some coffee.

But not regular coffee but "café con piernas" or "coffee with legs". He was a little secretive about it and I was quite surprised when he lead us into a place which looked like a strip bar. And that is basically the concept of those places - there are lots of them in downtown Santiago. Except the women that serve you the coffee do not strip...but then they are not wearing a whole lot to begin with anyway. A really strange business idea!

To finish things off we went to a bar which is famous because Bill Clinton once drank a coke there. The half empty glass is still on display - I wonder what they did to it so the coke did not turn green....

The next day I took a bus to Valparaiso where I am at the moment. This is where I will celebrate New Year's tomorrow. I already have taken lots of pictures of this beautiful place but I will save those for my next post. I should have enough time at different airports on my way to New Zealand.

Happy New Year to everybody!