It took 22 hours total to get from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santigo, Chile, but the buses are so nice though that you can’t complain. They feed you three meals, serve you wine, play movies, and the seats are so comfortable that you’d almost think you were in your own bed. Overnight buses are the best too; last night I went to sleep, and this morning this first thing I saw when I woke up were the Andes Mountains. The bus served us a light breakfast, and a little while later we went through customs, which was a little building right smack in the middle of the Andes on the border of Argentina and Chile. We got off the bus and touched the Chilean snow for the first time. The air was so crisp and clean, and the mountains were huge and beautiful. We grabbed our carry-on luggage from the bus and waited in line to have our passports stamped – first by Argentina’s customs window and then by Chile’s right next to it. A dog sniffed our bags to detect fruits, vegetables, and drugs; he was so good that he was even able to smell the scent of the apples that I’d had in my backpack earlier! We got back on the bus and continued our journey to Santiago on extremely windy roads; we were glad to have made it through the pass, which tends to be closed fairly often due to snow.
We made it to Santiago, which is a huge city surrounded by mountains. It seemed to be pretty smoggy there compared to Buenos Aires, but were only there long enough to buy our ticket to Vina del Mar and have a snack. Our bus to Vina del Mar took only 2 hours, and we grabbed a taxi to go to Clay’s host-family’s house. We noticed immediately how hilly Vina is, and it was a little hard for the taxi driver to find the house. When he stopped and asked several people for directions, their advice was to “go up the hill more,” which was a strange because usually people give directions in “blocks” instead of how high to drive up a hill. We finally made it to Clay’s, and it was really weird to be meeting up with someone – who I’d sat by in my international studies class with everyday this past semester at A&M – in a different country.
Clay’s host-family was super nice. He introduced me to his four host-brothers and the other guy who was studying abroad there, and we all sat around a table and ate what the Chileans call “once” for dinner, which consisted of a cheese sandwich. I got dressed and then we all headed out; it was one of his brother’s girlfriend’s birthdays so we were fortunate enough to be able to hang out with some Chileans. We took a bus to Valparaiso, which is only about 30 minutes away from Vina. We went to a bar, ate tacos (“once” wasn’t filling enough), and talked for a couple hours. Then we all headed over to a club, where we danced on a floor of pure sand until about 3am (luckily night life in Chile is only until about 4am, not 7am like Argentina). We grabbed a “completo” on the way home, which was typical of Chile. Although the Chileans think that completos are the greatest things in the whole world, to us Americans they’re pretty much just a very long hot dog completely covered in tomato puree and mayonnaise. We caught a bus back towards Clay’s house, where his mom was waiting in her car for us on the corner. About 9 people piled into her car, and she drove us up the curvy hill back to the house.
