From San Juan we took an early morning 3 hour bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina. Upon arriving in the city of Mendoza, we found a hostal and some food (including ice cream which Argentina is famous for) and then took a bus to the neighboring town of Maipu which is famous for its wineries. The touristy thing to do is to rent bikes and do a wine tour by bike. After inquiring about renting bikes we eliminated this idea due to the price and the time and decided to just walk 3.5 km to a winery and hope to make it here and to one other winery before closing time. Unfortunately the 3.5 km walk seemed like a VERY long time to Mike who still had some lingering problems from the Argentine black sausage (in combination with all the other food we had eaten). On the way, we stopped at a gas station which thankfully had a public bathroom - a very rare thing in South America. I walked up with him to the door and quickly learned that it would be much better for me to stand out of earshot. Many minutes later, Mike came out and I tried to convince him that we should just get a bus back to Mendoza and go to the hostal but he insisted we keep going not wanting to miss out on anything. After finally getting to the winery we sat down and were told to wait a few minutes and then we would have a tasting session. As we sat there I watched Mike´s usually happy face lose even more color so I tried to convince him that we should just go but he didn´t budge. After another minute or so, I just got up and thankfully he followed.On the way back a police man offered to give us a ride back to where the bus could pick us up. Although he most likely just wanted to help we decided we had made it this far without any problems and it was best not to press our luck. So, we made another stop at the gas station for Mike and then got on a bus back to Mendoza. From there, I gave Mike his privacy for a bit but all was well by 8pm when he ate 9 empanadas (meat, cheese, or chicken stuffed things like hot pockets) for dinner.The next day, we took an early morning bus to cross the border to Santiago, Chile. Thankfully, MANY buses cross this border so the price for the 8 hour bus ride including food was only $13 American. The ride was absolutely beautiful through the Andes and customs was set at the highest point of our drive through the snowy peaks. Customs was a slow process - about an hour plus - in which we got off the bus. Mike threw a snowball at me, I pushed him in the snow so that he got one foot wet and then he angrily retaliated by taking a huge pile and throwing it just below my head so that the cold snow went all down my back. We´ll see who will have the last laugh though...When we arrived in Santiago, the rumors we had heard of the city being dirty and looking unsafe were confirmed so we immediately took a bus 3 hours south to Talca. Arriving at night, we immediately got into a taxi and went to a predetermined hostal where the owner helped us out a lot. We wanted to go to a national park called siete tazas which has 7 plus waterfalls. Turns out, no buses really go to the park at this time of year because it is winter. Instead, the owner helped us figure out how to get to another national park which we set out for the next morning.In the morning, we took the 7:15 am very old, rickety bus to the park. The bus was absolutely freezing. No heat and the windows kept coming open bcause the bus was so rickety. About two hours later we arrived 2 km from the park. After walking 2km we met the park ranger who gave us a map and showed us the one route we could do because the rest of the routes were covered too deeply with snow. With the park to ourselves, we hiked in our sneakers through a muddy and snowy trail. Unfortunately, we were unable to get to the pretty lake and volcano viewpoints but it was a nice change-up from the usual hikes we have been doing through very dry-weathered areas. The whole thing was very Pennsylvania in the winterish. By 2pm we made it back to the entrance with wet feet and got on the bus to go back to Talca.At this point, we are still in Talca and have decided to wait until tomorrow to go to Santiago because we did not want to arrive at night.
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