Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar

After a good nights sleep, in a bed! after the last two nights spent on a night bus we got up and got on a bus to Vina del Mar. After the weather didn't go our way in Mar del Plata (Argentina) we hoped the chilean equivalent would preform a bit better. We arrived around midday and after lunch we eventually found our hostel after a bit of confusion. We finally got in a cab and assumed it would take us to where we wanted to go. Little did we know cabs don't work the same here. We got dropped off on the motor way in-between  the two cities with the driver telling us to get out and take another taxi. For some reason it was ridiculously cheap so we didn't kick a fuss and went to get another cab to our hostel. While standing on the side of the motorway looking for a taxi, we put together a few observations and worked out how the system works. The cabs aren't private and run on set routes and set prices. Once we worked out what kind of cab and the direction we needed to get, we managed to jump in a half full cab and get to the hostel. 
Still completely shattered from the insane amount of hours spent on a bus, we spent the whole evening relaxing and recovering in our room. The following day we got up and decided to check out Valparaiso, just a short drive from Vina del Mar. Valparariso is the third largest city in Chile. It use to serve as the main port in South America but since the Panama cannel was created it has almost been made redundant other than local goods. The city had a really cool old feel about it. It felt semi neglected as most of the old buildings had seen better days, but also there weren't many new buildings or grotty modernist buildings so the city had a really genuine feel about it. We started by taking one of the characteristic cable-cars up one of the many hills. Locals use these to get to and from the city, they look like they haven't been serviced for a century, really legit. The houses crawl up the steep hills that surround the city and are all painted bright colours. From the top of the cable car we couldn't get over how much it looked like an extremely overpopulated Wellington. With the dock, the harbour, and the city at the foot of similar shaped hills surrounding it, it really did resemble it.  Kind of scary to think Wellington might look that populated in 30years or so. From the top we walked back down towards the city down the steep old streets. After an amazing lunch we continued to explore the old streets. All the big colonial mansions are painted bright colours and in one area everything has all been restored and maintained so its a really nice area to walk around. The other thing that adds to Valparsiso's character are all the murals painted on the walls. There is one section of the city full of murals called the "open air museum".
 After a full day of exploring, we got back on a bus to Vina Del Mar. That evening we met up with Sergio (a friend from Santiago) and checked out a couple of Vinas bars.

The following day we got up, packed our bags, then headed to the beach for one last day on a South American white sand beach. The morning was cloudy but by midday it cleared up and became a scorcher. We spent the day just relaxing on the beach as the crushing waves were deadly, a bit too lethal to swim in. After a full day on the beach we headed back to get our bags from the hostel then got a bus back to Santiago to enjoy one last South American night out.

Mendoza - 08/02/2011

After another 10 hour night bus we arrived in Mendoza early morning. We were quite excited to explore Mendoza as there was a big earthquake quite awhile ago in the 1800s that destroyed and flattened the town. Expecting to see a kind of equivalent to Napier, for some reason that was not the case. It turned out there isn't a lot to see or do unless you go at least an hour out of the city which was not ideal for us being so short on time. We had a look around and went to a few parks, as we were extremely tired with all the travelling and not staying in a bed for a few nights we settled for some mcdonalds. To our amazement we bumped into a couple of british guys we met in Iguazu which was pretty crazy. After a quick catchup and once we finished our meal we headed back to the bus terminal to return to Santiago.

The trip over the Andes was pretty amazing with incredible harsh landscape. Beautiful scenery. By the time we reached the top to cross the boarder from Argentina to Chile it was freezing! We were not prepared for that coming from 30o. Shorts and jandals are far from ideal in snowy and icy conditions. Luckily we didn't have to stick around, once we got our passports stamped and bags checked we were back on our way to Santiago.

Cordoba - 07/02/2011

We took a 10 hour night bus from buenos aires to cordoba as soon as we got back from mar del plata. We were trying to get to Mendoza but there wernt any buses so late (midnight) so cordoba it was! On our bus we met a german guy who is studying in Santiago. It turned out he was visiting a friend of his from Germany who is  studying in cordoba. So lucky for us as we got a free guided tour around the city! Knowing nothing about cordoba we found out it us the second largest city in argentina and was well worth the stop. We saw some beautiful churches but what was really cool was a paved reflected outline mirrored all the buildings around the city centre. A very nice touch. 
We made a quick stop to get some amazing huge ice creams then carried on through beautiful pedestrian only streets, parks and buildings. We saw people pulling down a small very old building to replace it with big apartment blocks which was very sad. We then watched in amazement as this extremely talented spray paintest did some pictures and unfortunately missed out of some of his work. After having an amazing steak for dinner we headed back to the bus terminal to head to Mendoza.

Mar del Plata - 06/02/2011

We thought a couple of days relaxing on a nice sunny ohot beach would be a perfect way to spend a part of our last  week in south America. We heard mar del plata was the place to go and where all argentinians spend their summer months on the beach. This sounded like what we were after so after our slow and frustrating morning we caught a 5 hour bus to mar del plata. We arrived at about 930pm and were extremely shocked at how cold it was (15o). After being in at least 30o heat for 6weeks it was a shock to the system. We didn't muck around and quickly caught a taxi to a hostel, luckily enough they had room for us. We were extremely tired so we got a quick bite to eat then headed straight to bed. We got the giggles as a guy in our dorm had an extremely funny snore, but we quickly fell asleep. After a good nights sleep, (catching up on some from the lack of from the night before), we woke up eager to get to the beach. We stepped outside and were completely shocked how cold (22o), windy and overcast it was but yet everyone was still heading to the beach like it was Copacabana in rio! A bit confused and extremely cold we just couldn't bring ourselves to go to the beach so we explored the city centre in hope the weather would warm up a bit. We really enjoyed the relaxed feel of the place with everyone in holiday mode. However we decided to move on in search for the heat. 

Last night in Buenos Aires - 05/02/2011

After a jam-packed few days in Buenos Aires we had managed to see almost everything we want to. We spent the Saturday exploring a couple of parts of central city we missed along with a bit of shopping and relaxing in a few of Buenos Aires many parks, partly in preparation for the sure to be massive Sarurday night in Buenos Aires. By now we had learnt that Argentineans are very late starters when it comes to going out so we didn't even start our night off until 11 or so. We drank Stella Artois from litre bottles which was a strange concept for us and met several others from the hostel to hit the town with. Two o'clock rolled around which meant it was time to make our way to Polermo, the party district. Unfortunately for us everywhere has door charges which made it hard to see what Buenos Aires had to offer so we spent our evening in the one club. We really enjoyed the club and were with a cool bunch of people so partied away until 7 having no idea what time it was, until we went to get some fresh air outside when we realised the sun was up. 
We taxied home and went straight to bed forgetting our plans. Necane woke up around 1pm realising we were supposed to checkout of the hostel two hours ago.

Tigre - 04/02/2011

After a busy few days in the middle of Buenos Aires, we decided to head out of the city for the day. We took a train to a small district called Tigre, an hour out of the city. We didn't feel like doing much, so after a nice lunch we spent the day chilling out in this beautiful relaxed town, walking along the river and sitting in the sun. 
We headed back into the busy Buenos Aires that afternoon and found a massive street Market so we spent the evening exploring that and buying a few bits and bobs. We got back to the hostel later on to find a sneaky Argentinian had helped themselves into Necane's bag. Luckily they missed her iPhone but her wallet had been taken. Probably to the thief's disappointment they didn't get a big score in terms of cash but we had to spend the evening trying to contact people to cancel the cards and found they had already cracked the visa for a couple of hundy. Very disappointing to happen after a completely trouble-free trip but it was far from the worst thing that could have happened. 

La Boca - 03/02/2011

We had a slow start from the night before but after a late breakfast we got on our way to La Boca. From what we had heard and from the photos we had seen, La Boca looked like a cool neighbourhood that characterised Buenos Aires. Old colonial houses all painted crazy bright colours. Once we arrived we were overwhelmed by all the stereotypical tourists, who had just hopped straight off the tour bus. The crowds of people made it an extremely unauthentic experience along with the locals exploiting it touristically for all it's worth, dressing up for photos and selling souvenirs. We tried to see it for what it used to be but the crowds got to us so we escaped to a restaurant for an amazing Argentinian steak. After our delicious feed we headed back to the central city to explore down by the waterfront. Along with the grand government buildings there is a modern iconic bridge that crosses the cannel. While it was cool during the day, we knew from photos it was much more impressive at night, so we returned later on and spent the evening down there.