vamos, vamos a CHILE!

this weekend, i went to chile with 5 of my girlfriends. it was a lot like going to córdoba and i learned that i enjoy traveling in smaller groups (a la trip to patagonia) but it was a lot of fun. i actually didn't take that many pictures of anything, really, but i'll post what i have.

we woke up early early early on friday morning to catch a 7am bus out of mendoza. why didn't we take a night bus you might ask? well, the drive to chile is supposed to be beautiful because if you look at a map of south america, you will see that to get to chile (we bussed into santiago) from mendoza, you go right through the cordillera, aka the andes mountains. so we wanted to see if these stories were true, my friends from the university of denver have friends studying abroad in viña del mar, and they vouched that the drive is beautiful. so we spent 7 hours on a bus with gorgeous views. it wasn't until we got past customs that it got to be so scary because we had just climbed up the pass and now needed to go down a road that was barely big enough for two lanes and had almost 30 switchbacks (there were signs at every curve, yes we counted). it was incredible, but terrifying. after half an hour of snaking through the andes, we got down to sea level and entered santiago. we decided to just hop on another bus and get to viña to see the other denver kids because that was mostly why we decided to go to chile. around 4pm friday, we arrived in viña del mar!

going into chile...yes, that is a destroyed part of a railroad track above the road

bienvenidos a chileeeeee

it's easy to see why the pass is closed more than half the year

beginning the descent

viña!

right outside our first "hostel"

we hadn't booked a hostel in advance but figured that since viña is a resort town, we would find one easily. with all six of us with our huge backpacks and confused, grimy faces, we stumbled into downtown viña looking like....well, tourists. viña is a touristy, americanized town. so we sort of fit in! we asked two girls (who actually turned out to be american as well) where we could find a hostel and they gave us vague directions. after asking around, we finally found one. it was a bit dirty on the outside, but completely empty, which we gave no thought to. it also wasn't really a hostel. it was more like a 4 story old house/hotel. we were too tired to keep walking around so just dumped our stuff on the beds and walked next door to the internet cafe to get in touch with the viña kids from denver.

friday night was a big night because it was the argentina vs. chile soccer game. big rivalry between these two countries and i'm not quite sure why. so, the viña kids had planned a great night for us: we were going to watch the game at one of their friend's apartments and then head to a pub crawl. we rushed back to the "hostel", got dressed, and went to dinner. after dinner, we headed to the apartment, where the game was 3/4 of the way done....and argentina was winning 4-1. viva la argentina! except i said this as a joke to one of the chilean boys at the apartment and he actually got really mad. they also got really offended when we said that we were studying in mendoza. argentina is a little pretentious and tried to make their own version of the spanish language. however, they could only get people to conform to the vos form. vos is like tú but easier. for all y'all spanish geeks out derrr, in argentina, quieres becomes querés, tienes becomes tenés, etc. etc. it's much easier for me to remember and rolls off the tongue much more smoothly. however, when we used this form and said our double l's like a soft chhhhh sound instead of the "normal textbook spanish" sound, the chileans got really offended and tried to correct us, telling us that we were not learning spanish, but a dumb language that no one can understand. i'm still not sure why there's so much tension between the two countries but i will be sure to ask in the next few days.

so after arguing with these chilean boys for a good half hour, we all headed down to the pub crawl across the street. we met the two leaders (one of them was from the uk and lives in viña but has lived all across asia and indonesia and south america because her boyfriend is an environmentalist and she just moves with him. she doesn't speak a lick of spanish but teaches english in viña to kindergartners by day and leads pub crawls by night. and she's only 24. i'm jellinnnnn) and a lot of other kids who were also studying abroad in viña del mar.

las mendocinas en viña!

we went to some pretty strange bars. the first one had a huge picture of beyonce on the wall. the second one was hollywood themed and had images of tom hanks and avatar staring at you from all walls. creepy. the last bar there was karaoke and YES of course i did it. mariah and i first sang "ave maria" by david bisbal (find it here!) and "dancing queen" by ABBA.  it was so much fun. then we headed to a club to dance. when it got too late aka 4am, early for the chileans, our kind viña/denver friends walked us to the street our hostel was on. little did we know we picked the sketchiest street to stay on because they advised us not to speak english as we walked and to keep our heads down and just walk right to the hostel. the street, called "van schroeders" was dubbed "von sketchville" by these kids because of how unfriendly it was. so we put our heads down and started walking, only to find out that our friends had pointed us in the wrong direction (may have been due to the fact that there was a free wine/beer hour in the beginning of the pub crawl). we finally figured it out, got into the hostel unscathed and fell asleep.