02.27.08 - To Pucon via Santiago

Cramped Beginnings with a  Plush Finale

Mendoza is a great city to come down to, from the mountains. Open-air cafés line several blocks of the downtown, surrounding the main park and the people are generally very friendly and helpful. Part of the charm of Mendoza is despite the relative lack of high-rise structures that typically define a city’s center, the city has fairly cosmopolitan taste and fashion. This is likely aided by the fact that it is the “wine capital” of Argentina, so a certain volume of “airs” come with the territory.




The itch to move from the familiar and return to Chile was pulling me southward to the Lake District and Pucon, but first, we had to figure out how to literally get out of town. Canadian Dan had decided to join me on the venture to find and climb Pucon’s smoking volcano.  So, we headed to the bus station, only to find that there were no remaining buses to Santiago arriving before mid-night. So we decided to face fate and book a ticket for the next morning.  Suddenly, there were seats available with another company and we only had a couple of hours to kill prior to departure.  We attacked a ham and olive pizza, the only flavor choice on the menu, and struggled through a Budweiser, which honestly tasted awful.



Our bus to Santiago actually turned out to be a mini-bus, but we happily crammed ourselves in for supposedly four and a half hour trip to Santiago and waiting connection for an overnight bus to Pucon.



The first three hours were a repeat of the same desert grounds on the way to Mt. Aconcagua and Punte de Inca.



There used to be a rail line between the Mendoza and Santiago, but somewhere in the battles between Chile and Argentina and maintenance only the more stable reminders remain.



As we passed the Mt. Aconcagua graveyard, for actual climbers who have died in attempted ascent, it was nice to not be one of them.



The border crossing between Chile and Argentina is infamous for petty inspection and general mutual annoyances. It is not uncommon for the transition to take over three hours, but today we slipped through in just under an hour.



The Andes are particularly rugged through the border check-point and surrounding peaks. Several ski areas dot the highway and in some places special skiing overpasses have been built so that the winter recreationalists can take full advantage of the slopes.



Maybe the bus ticket vendor in Mendoza really meant seven and a half hours or four and a half hours to the border? We arrived in Santiago with just enough time to grab a quick sandwich and board our 11:30pm bus to Pucon. Canadian Dan and I took turns guarding the bags while each finished final errands.



Neither of us had ever ridden in a proper “overnight” bus before, so the term “semi-cama” (or coma) sounded more like our state of being than an actual class of travel. The seats were an awesome surprise and contrast to the mini-bus. They leaned back to about 160 degrees, supplemented by a footrest. The subtle bouncing of the bus lulled us into slumbering submission. The beautiful thing was that by morning we would be at our destination.