47 hours in a bus!!!! What a record : )

Hello everyone and here ya go Mom, a new post to enjoy! We finally made it to our Chilean destination after two different bus rides from Peru. We took the 17 hour bus ride from Cusco, Peru to the border town of Tacna, Peru. We arrived in the early morning and upon exiting the bus, we knew we weren´t in Kansas anymore, we had arrived in the Atacama desert. There was nothing but sand outside of the town on both sides as far as you could see. It was pretty cool…at first. haha. We took a taxi from Tacna to Arica, Chile. We got into a taxi at the bus station who said he was taking us to Arica. Then we ended up at a taxi terminal thing while our taxi driver was unloading all of our stuff and putting us into someone else´s hands. What are ya going to do? It turned out all right, we were following the advice of Lonely Planet and taking a taxi rather than a bus because the taxi drivers are experts on crossing the border. Our driver became our friend and did just that, he guided us through the border process. We were excited because Chile has a pretty multicolor stamp.

Upon arriving at the bus station we were looking for a bus to take us half way to Santiago so we could have a break from buses for a day before continuing on the entire way to Santiago, 28 hours from Arica. Well, it doesn´t work that way. These buses go straight to Santiago, all 28 hours, no need to stop! WHAT? So we found ourselves buying tickets for that same day on a bus leaving in just a few hours. We decided to kill the time grocery shopping because if we are driving through the desert, you don´t want to get caught on a broken down bus with nothing to eat right?

Little did we know that this short break would be our only for quite some time. We are just amazed that people do this here all the time, 28 hours on a bus! We were pretty bad off because after all we had just gotten off our 17 hour ride. Anyway, it actually didn´t turn out to bad. We made it and Santiago was well worth it. I sat next to a really nice guy, far from Lindsay and Marion, who bought me juice and cookies. By the way, the bus ride turned out to be 30 hours long. So thats right 47 hours in a bus with a total break of about 5 hours…4 of those not included in the total count. We are crazy huh? We had pretty much nothing but the Atacama as our view out the window. We went to bed that night on the bus to the view of sand everywhere and woke up the next morning, about 17 hours into Chile, to the same thing. Pretty amazing. I didn´t realize it was so big, but it spans the entire norther half of this country.

We stayed in a cute hostel called La Casa Roja in Barrio Brasil in Santiago. The street was called Agustinas, how fun is that? The building was old and pretty elaborate. We liked it.

We wandered around Santiago like we do most big cities, we just started walking. We ran into a few shops here and there and found a cute outdoor market. Across the street from the market was a park that was made out of a building. Hard to explain, there was a building in front with different levels of patios going up the hill. At the top was a lookout over the city. We loved it! It was kind of secret gardenish and very romantic, there were couples everywhere. The view from the top is awesome. Santiago is situated in a valley and therefore surrounded by snow covered mountains.

The next day we bought our bus tickets and found a mall. More shopping…haha, now that we are getting near the end we can evaluate how much we have to spend and how much room we all have left! After lightening our pockets and making our luggage more heavy, we met up with a Chilean friend of mine that studied with me in Buenos Aires. We were excited to see more of the city especially with a local who knows it. We walked through a pretty neighborhood called Latarria and found several parks and both the museum of Bellas Artes and the museum of Arte Contemporanea. It was so good seeing her again and we had fun walking around getting to see a little bit more of the city than we would have solo. We have all decided that we need to return to Santiago because two days isn´t nearly enough time for such a large and great city!

The next day we found ourselves on our second to last bus ride of the trip…bus hour total thus far, 171 hours! We took a bus through the Andes and boy was it cold! It was interesting because up the mountain there were different people skiing. Some of the lifts were over the highway even! The entire way we had such a pretty view. It took us about an hour in total to cross the border into Argentina. We were standing outside for the most part too! brrr. After the border crossing and a slight overheating bus situation we have arrived in Mendoza! A 9 hour bus ride in total. Today we are headed on a wine tour! When in Mendoza drink wine right? Tomorrow we are taking our last bus ride, 14 hours to our final destination Buenos Aires. We miss and love you all! See you guys soon!!!

Megan