Yesterday was great. After staying out all night to celebrate Phil's birthday (except Wong. He fell asleep at our streetside table and made the walk of shame home while the others raged on), a bus picked us up at 8:30 a.m. to for a rafting trip. Our boat (dubbed the "power boat" by our extremely nice Canadian guide, Danny) braved the class 3 (yawn) rapids and completed the 12 km stretch without losing anybody to the frigid cold of Rio Blanco. Auggie did lose his watch, though.
In a brainstorming session the day before, we had decided to try to camp somewhere between Mendoza and the border for a night before heading into Chile. Though we had read about a few possible camping places, we had no choice but to wing it after rafting and lucked out when Danny and the other river guides hooked us up with a ride from the rafting area to a nearby campsite in the tiny town of Postilleros.
Our door-to-door service took us to the campsite/sleepy hippie enclave owned by Paco, a beanpole of a man with a long nicotine-stained beard who looked like he had a story or two to tell. I'm sure he did, but he spoke no english and we never really got to hear it. Still, he had what we wanted. His "campsite" consisted of a kitchen hut, bathroom and cold shower facilities, an office and a small newly-constructed building which housed about 8 beds. Paco offered us beds in the new building, but we had our hearts set on camping and he instead provided us with two tents. We shared the campsite with a group of gypsy hippies who spent the day making bracelets with lanyard (which they would then try to sell the next day). They didn't say much to us. We just weren't hippie enough for them.
Undeterred, we spent the rest of the day exploring the surrounding area, which included some hills and the beautiful Posterillos Lake. We crashed early (had to axe a plan to sleep under the stars when a storm moved through), and woke up the next morning in time to catch a 7:30 bus to the border town of Puente del Inca.
There wasn't much to Puente del Inca, but it sits only a short hike from the base of Mt. Aconcagua, the tallest peak outside of Asia. After buying tickets for a 5 o'clock bus over the border to Santiago, we hiked up the road (thought about hitchhiking but never really had the chance) and visited the park surrounding the mountain. It was a great way to kill time and wear our legs out before the upcoming bus ride.
We are in Santiago now but don't plan on staying. If all goes well we will be on a 24-hour bus north to Iquique, near the Peruvian border. We have plans to arrive in Cusco, Peru on April 2 and have some time to kill before we get there, so we have decided to check out Iquique after a Slovenian from our rafting boat recommended it. Apparently you can go skiing on sand dunes there. We'll let you know how that goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment