Crossing the Border

I made it to wine country. Arrived in Mendoza, Argentina late Wednesday night. We arrived much later than scheduled due to construction and then spending 4 hours at the Chile/Argentina border waiting to cross. There were a ton of people crossing the border - mostly in their own personal vehicles. The border between Santiago and Mendoza is at the top of the mountain. There were some cafes at the border, so we were able to get some dinner. A lot of the people with their own vehicles turned the engines off and put the car in neutral. When the line moved forward, they pushed their cars. Wouldn't be fun to run out of gas at the border in the middle of nowhere.

We had a nice time in Santiago. We met some guys from the States at our hostel and ended up site seeing with them. Chris was our tour guide since he had lived in Santiago before.

I was glad to get back to Argentina where I'm familiar with the currency and dialect. Chilean Spanish and Argentine Spanish sound very different.

When we arrived at our hostel close to midnight, we found out that they had given our beds away because they thought we were no shows. They still had beds for us for Thursday and Friday though. The staff at the hostel were wonderful and called around to find us another hostel. We chose to come back to our original hostel for last night and tonight - it was highly recommended to us by someone we met in Calafate and it has really high ratings, just won number 1 hostel in Latin America for 2009. Now, we're settle in Mendoza and ready to tour some vineyards. It's really hot, but a relaxing city.