The next stop from Mendoza was Santiago but how to get there? Option 1 was to take the bus. Option 2 was to fly. The flight is a short hop but the bus is a drive over The Andes. We had almost committed to the flight when we learned that the highest point on the road route was only 3200m. We had been worried about too much altitude but 3200m is fine so long as you are not running up any stairs. Mendoza bus station is pretty good but I wouldn’t buy any coffee there unless you like your coffee tasting of cigarettes. The journey over the mountains was truly spectacular. If we had been in a car it would have taken twice as long due to the photo stops. We did get a couple of decent photos out of the coach window (below). Just past the highest point, the bus stops to go through passport control. There is a form to fill in and your bags get X-rayed. But not much else. The border process took about 40 mins then we were off again. One thing to remember is you can’t take any food over the border so apart from the banana and the pack of biscuits we snaffled on the way up we had nothing for the way down. And what snacking opportunities did they have in the border building? A burger van – no. A crisp machine – no. In fact there was nothing at all to eat. So when we finally hit Santiago we were pretty hungry! As the bus got closer to Santiago station (there are two and we finished at the south terminal), the view from the window got quite grim. The station wasn’t in the the most appealing neighbourhood (unless you are attracted to barbed wire and broken glass). We had heard that parts of Santiago can be a bit of a security nightmare so we were straight into a taxi and bound for the hotel within a minute of arriving. All was well. Hotel great and neighbourhood very safe.
We learned the next day that a few hours after we drove over the top of The Andes, the border was closed due to bad weather. So we were very lucky.
