On The Road

Last Thursday, my friend Miguel and I left Santiago de Chile via bus for the long journey to Cordoba. This is my first adventure to Argentina and riding in a bus through the Andes was quite exciting. It´s a bit difficult to sleep when the driver is passing semi trucks on blind curves over the mountain pass! Needless to say, I did not rest much on the trip to Mendoza. Besides the crazy driving, we spent four hours at the border waiting for the gaurds to search our bags. In the end, it took us about nine hours for the trip to Mendoza. The layover left us with seven hours to kill, so our new friend Nico invited us to stay at his house for the night. His family welcomed us for dinner and gave us warm beds to sleep for a few hours. The people that I meet continue to amaze me with their hospitality and generosity.

The next morning we caught the bus to Cordoba, which took us close to twelve hours. We quickly found a hostel in Cordoba and waited for my friend Katja to arrive from Cafayate. It is so great to see her and we spent hours catching up on our latest adventures. Cordoba is a beautiful city and we met some wonderful friends at the hostel. We all went out dancing together on Saturday night, so Sunday morning we were moving a bit slow. The group decided that it would be best to buy some cheese, bread, and salami so that we could spend the day picnicing in the mountians. So seven of us piled into the car for the trip to Carlos Paz, where we sat next to the river for the afternoon. The day was absolutely beautiful, filled with music and food and conversations with our new friends. We ended the evening with a huge bbq back at the hostel. We had fifteen people join us to celebrate the end to a wonderful weekend.

Monday morning we all bought bus tickets in different directions and said our farewells. Miguel traveled back to Santiago, while Katja and I headed north to a small village named San Marcos Sierras. It´s a lovely little village in the mountains that is filled with hippies. We decided to camp just outside out town, which ended up being a bad choice. While we were cooking dinner, a dog tore gigantic holes in my tent. Ugh! I tried to repair one with duct tape, but I ran out halfway through the job. Does anyone know if they sell duct tape down here? If not, somebody will have to mail me some so that I can finish the repair and continue using my tent :)

So here we are in San Marcos for the day. In the morning we will make our way towards a small town in the northern part of Argentina. Katja stayed in Cafayate for three days and loved it, so we will go back for a while to relax there. She will be flying back to Germany soon, but it´s so wonderful to be traveling with such a great friend. We are having an amazing time together!

Sending love and hugs to all!