Buses, Graffiti and more Buses

Yes, we are still bee-lining south. We are almost to our first big stop (the Lakes District) which boarders both Chile and Argentina where we will make our way back and forth across the boarder. We have one more 17 hour bus ride tomorrow and then we will finally be there. Luckily it is an overnight bus so we can sleep at least 8 of those hours.

Some of the stopovers we have seen over the past week on our way south in Chile are:

La Serana: not that exciting, however we did take a short day trip to a sleepy little beach town called Tongoy. We are still in the spring season so the town was quiet, but supposedly this is quite a summer destination for Chileans. There was

supposed to be the "most amazing seafood" there, but since the menus were only in spanish, and the waiter couldn´t translate for us, we ended up with yet another full meal of deep fried fish, deep fried potatoes and deep fried cheese empanadas. I swear the grease down here will be the death of us.

Valparaiso: an absolutely amazing city just outside of Santiago. I loved it here. It is a huge city of color, graffiti and hills. We wandered the cobbled, narrow streets up and down the hills for 2 days. The houses line the hills and are so old, rusty and stacked, they look like they will topple any day. The city sits right on the ocean and used to be a main port for all of South America. They have small trams scattered around the city, where you can take ride to the top of streets since the hills are so steep. The alley-ways are plastered in amazing art and some of the areas are dedicated open air museums where the huge murals line the buildings and retaining walls of the city. I could have lost myself in the hills of this city for days.

But alas, we had to keep moving south and now we are in Mendoza, Argentina (the Napa Valley of Argentina). The ride here from Valparaiso was amazing as we wound up through the andies and through an amazing mountain pass. More posts on Argentina, coming.