The unexpected Journey
EIn Gastbeitreg von Simon und Leanne, mit denen ich gemeinsam das Abenteuer bestanden habe (bis auf die mastrubierenden Affen)
We left the Oasis tour in SanPedro and headed down to Santiago. After spending one night there we had enough of the place, reminded us too much of home and very expensive. So we decided to make our way across to Argentina to Mendosa with our mate Ferddie, a German guy we met on the bus to Santiago.
We get on the bus, and after about 5 minutes, this Australian guy sits next to us and starts chatting away ENDLESSLY! Honestly, this guy could talk the hind legs off a donkey. If there´s a topic about anything, this guy has either been there and done it better, cheaper or faster or has an opinon on it. The fact that he had a haircut like the blonde guy from ´Dumb & Dumber´should have been a warning to us, but at the time we didn´t notice anything amiss. So he carries on with his endless prattle, barking on about how he´s gonna get off the bus a bit early at a town called ´Los Penitentes´. Apparently, it´s a great snowsports resort, really cheap and really great for skiing and snowboarding, but if we wanna go there ourselves, we should do it NOW because a weather front is coming in and we wont get another chance to ski for the next couple of weeks. Our german friend Ferdie has been snowboarding before and wanted to go, but Leanne and I only had travellers cheques, a few Chillean pesos but no Argentian pesos. "No problem" says the Ozzie. "You can change money at the border". Well, we´re still debating whether to join this guy when we arrive at the Chille/Argentina border up in the middle of the snowy mountains. We ask, but there´s nowhere to change our money. "Ahh, don´t worry" says the Ozzie. "You can change it when we get there". Eventually, we decide to join this joker and the bus stops off at the resort (about 4 hours short of Mendosa, our original destination).
The scene is bleak, but spectacular. We´re surrounded by snow and mountains on all sides!! But it´s almost dark, freezing cold, we have no money and WORST of all, this Ozzie turns round to us and says "Right then, lets go find a place to stay."
"HANG ON" we say, "Haven´t you booked something in advance?"
"Nope" is the reply.
So, with ALL of our luggage in about 2 feet of snow (on the clearer pathways) we trudge off and try to find some lodging. For about an hour, we´re going round while this fool HAGGLES with every hostel owner and moves on. All of the hostels were reasonable, but not for this guy. The first place is too small. The second is too expensive. The third has a friggin GAS heater (that apparently gives off too many fumes)!! Just as we`re starting to lose our patience, we arrive at a hostel which we all agree is acceptable. This place is ideal. For $50 we were able to get a nights accommodation, dinner, breakfast, all our ski passes and hire equipment for a day!!!!So things were looking up but we didnt have any money to pay for it. Ferdie, came to our rescue and just about had enough money to cover all three of us (minus the Ozzie). With all this covered we hit the sack for the night.
After a decent nights sleep we head for the snow early in the morning, well 10am. We get all kitted out and on the slopes with our boards. The mountains look amazing- the scenery is breathtaking. Neither of us have snowboarded before and have no experience on the snow, so we are in for a suprise. So us virgins head for the mountains with Ferdie teaching us the basic skills. He is a great teacher and by the end of the day we can just about make it down the bottom section of the mountain. Just before our day was over we attempted to go on the ski lift. But neither of us could manage it. The lift consisted of a revolving cable with handles hanging down from it. To get on the lift you had to grab one of the handles and let it drag you up the mountain. Sounds easy enough, right? Very very wrong. We both tried this and ended up on our butts. Simon even managed one step further. When he did this he leant too far forward on the cable sending ripples along it which were carried all the way up to the top of the ski lift. Other people that had got on before him were thrown off and sent half way back down the mountain, sorry, ROLLING down the mountain! So after our attempts we decided to walk up the damn thing and leave the lifts to the professionals.
After a great day snowboarding, Leanne managed to get some Chillean money changed over at a hotel, but as they knew that there were no other means of us getting money, they charged an EXTORTIONATE ammount of commission, about a third in total! However, this still left us with enough money for the three of us to buy some nice hot soup and get our bus tickets the rest of the way to Mendosa. We were told by the local ticket vendor that there were busses leaving at 1700 and 2100. We wanted to get to Mendosa at a reasonable time, so at 1650 we brought all our luggage to the side of the snowy road outside the complex and waited. And waited. AND WAITED! At 1730 our extemities were starting to go numb, so Leanne and Ferdie went back inside to check with the ticket vendor just what the hell was going on. The vendor eventually comes outside and speaks to us, and Ferdie in fairly fluent Spannish explains that we´ve been waiting for 40 minutes in the cold and there´s been no bus!
"Impossible" says the vendor. "At 5pm there was a bus out here with 15 people and it left precisely on time. You must have gotten here late and missed it"
Ferdie then went onto explain (with some annoyance) that we were in fact 10 minutes EARLY for the bloody thing and there was NO bus and definately no 15 people!! The two of them start to get into a heated debate, when I (Simon) step in and separate the two. There was obviously some kind of misunderstanding and through whatever reason, we´ve missed it. End of story. We drag our bags from the roadside back into a nearby restaurant and wait for the next bus which leaves at 2100. It was around 20:15 when Ferdie asks me the time (because I´m the only one out of the three of us with a watch). "It´s eight fifteen", I say. He asks me to double check this with the waitress, just to make sure. I go up to a young waitress, and in spanish, ask her the time.
"It´s nine fifteen" she says.
"You mean eight fifteen", I replied.
"No, I mean NINE fifteen"!
The following few moments are now a bit of a blurr, but they went something like me saying "SHIT, WE´RE AN HOUR BEHIND, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!!" In my earlier haste at the border, I completely forgot to realise that Argentina is in fact a full hour AHEAD of Chille. So the bus was in fact there at 5pm that evening. We had arrived at ten to SIX!
AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!
The good news: bad weather had delayed our bus, so we did in fact manage to catch it. The bad news: that bloody Ozzie who got us into this mess in the first place and had told us that he was catching the five o´clock bus, was in fact waiting there next to the nine o´clock bus. OUR bus. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!
Eventually we arrived at Mendosa. To shut the Ozzie up we told him we were going to sleep after having an exhausting day. Thank god it worked!!
Mendosa has been really great and is one of our favourite places. Whilst here we went to the zoo and saw some class animals. One which sticks in our minds was the masturbating Chimp. This was so funny. There he is taking food with one hand and fiddling with himself with the other. These creatures have no dignity. The thing is, for such a big animal it was really really i mean incredibly small!!!!! (This is Leanne typing this by the way. I would like to state for the record that I do NOT spend much time staring at monkey genetalia) erm it kind of stuck out. They are black and this thing was bright pink, you couldnt miss it even if you were colour blind!
Moving on. . . .. . we also walked to the highest point where there is a monument of the Spirit of Independance. The walk started in the park which had an entrance similar to Hyde Park, so we felt right at home. Even the long entrance looked the same with trees lining both sides. In the round trip to this hill we walked around 10 miles but the walk was well worth while. From the top we could see all of Mendosa and beyond.
Well, that´s our latest tale to tell. Sorry it went on for so long, but it was a great experience, even though it was a bit of hassle. The moral of the story which we both learned was never to trust a Ozzie with a bad haircut. We hope you may remember this tale in years ahead and remember the message within. We´re off to Buenos Aires tonight, so we´ll let you know if we encounter any more idiots or masturbating monkeys.
Hasta Luego!
Simon & Leanne
x x x
We left the Oasis tour in SanPedro and headed down to Santiago. After spending one night there we had enough of the place, reminded us too much of home and very expensive. So we decided to make our way across to Argentina to Mendosa with our mate Ferddie, a German guy we met on the bus to Santiago.
We get on the bus, and after about 5 minutes, this Australian guy sits next to us and starts chatting away ENDLESSLY! Honestly, this guy could talk the hind legs off a donkey. If there´s a topic about anything, this guy has either been there and done it better, cheaper or faster or has an opinon on it. The fact that he had a haircut like the blonde guy from ´Dumb & Dumber´should have been a warning to us, but at the time we didn´t notice anything amiss. So he carries on with his endless prattle, barking on about how he´s gonna get off the bus a bit early at a town called ´Los Penitentes´. Apparently, it´s a great snowsports resort, really cheap and really great for skiing and snowboarding, but if we wanna go there ourselves, we should do it NOW because a weather front is coming in and we wont get another chance to ski for the next couple of weeks. Our german friend Ferdie has been snowboarding before and wanted to go, but Leanne and I only had travellers cheques, a few Chillean pesos but no Argentian pesos. "No problem" says the Ozzie. "You can change money at the border". Well, we´re still debating whether to join this guy when we arrive at the Chille/Argentina border up in the middle of the snowy mountains. We ask, but there´s nowhere to change our money. "Ahh, don´t worry" says the Ozzie. "You can change it when we get there". Eventually, we decide to join this joker and the bus stops off at the resort (about 4 hours short of Mendosa, our original destination).
The scene is bleak, but spectacular. We´re surrounded by snow and mountains on all sides!! But it´s almost dark, freezing cold, we have no money and WORST of all, this Ozzie turns round to us and says "Right then, lets go find a place to stay."
"HANG ON" we say, "Haven´t you booked something in advance?"
"Nope" is the reply.
So, with ALL of our luggage in about 2 feet of snow (on the clearer pathways) we trudge off and try to find some lodging. For about an hour, we´re going round while this fool HAGGLES with every hostel owner and moves on. All of the hostels were reasonable, but not for this guy. The first place is too small. The second is too expensive. The third has a friggin GAS heater (that apparently gives off too many fumes)!! Just as we`re starting to lose our patience, we arrive at a hostel which we all agree is acceptable. This place is ideal. For $50 we were able to get a nights accommodation, dinner, breakfast, all our ski passes and hire equipment for a day!!!!So things were looking up but we didnt have any money to pay for it. Ferdie, came to our rescue and just about had enough money to cover all three of us (minus the Ozzie). With all this covered we hit the sack for the night.
After a decent nights sleep we head for the snow early in the morning, well 10am. We get all kitted out and on the slopes with our boards. The mountains look amazing- the scenery is breathtaking. Neither of us have snowboarded before and have no experience on the snow, so we are in for a suprise. So us virgins head for the mountains with Ferdie teaching us the basic skills. He is a great teacher and by the end of the day we can just about make it down the bottom section of the mountain. Just before our day was over we attempted to go on the ski lift. But neither of us could manage it. The lift consisted of a revolving cable with handles hanging down from it. To get on the lift you had to grab one of the handles and let it drag you up the mountain. Sounds easy enough, right? Very very wrong. We both tried this and ended up on our butts. Simon even managed one step further. When he did this he leant too far forward on the cable sending ripples along it which were carried all the way up to the top of the ski lift. Other people that had got on before him were thrown off and sent half way back down the mountain, sorry, ROLLING down the mountain! So after our attempts we decided to walk up the damn thing and leave the lifts to the professionals.
After a great day snowboarding, Leanne managed to get some Chillean money changed over at a hotel, but as they knew that there were no other means of us getting money, they charged an EXTORTIONATE ammount of commission, about a third in total! However, this still left us with enough money for the three of us to buy some nice hot soup and get our bus tickets the rest of the way to Mendosa. We were told by the local ticket vendor that there were busses leaving at 1700 and 2100. We wanted to get to Mendosa at a reasonable time, so at 1650 we brought all our luggage to the side of the snowy road outside the complex and waited. And waited. AND WAITED! At 1730 our extemities were starting to go numb, so Leanne and Ferdie went back inside to check with the ticket vendor just what the hell was going on. The vendor eventually comes outside and speaks to us, and Ferdie in fairly fluent Spannish explains that we´ve been waiting for 40 minutes in the cold and there´s been no bus!
"Impossible" says the vendor. "At 5pm there was a bus out here with 15 people and it left precisely on time. You must have gotten here late and missed it"
Ferdie then went onto explain (with some annoyance) that we were in fact 10 minutes EARLY for the bloody thing and there was NO bus and definately no 15 people!! The two of them start to get into a heated debate, when I (Simon) step in and separate the two. There was obviously some kind of misunderstanding and through whatever reason, we´ve missed it. End of story. We drag our bags from the roadside back into a nearby restaurant and wait for the next bus which leaves at 2100. It was around 20:15 when Ferdie asks me the time (because I´m the only one out of the three of us with a watch). "It´s eight fifteen", I say. He asks me to double check this with the waitress, just to make sure. I go up to a young waitress, and in spanish, ask her the time.
"It´s nine fifteen" she says.
"You mean eight fifteen", I replied.
"No, I mean NINE fifteen"!
The following few moments are now a bit of a blurr, but they went something like me saying "SHIT, WE´RE AN HOUR BEHIND, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!!" In my earlier haste at the border, I completely forgot to realise that Argentina is in fact a full hour AHEAD of Chille. So the bus was in fact there at 5pm that evening. We had arrived at ten to SIX!
AAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!
The good news: bad weather had delayed our bus, so we did in fact manage to catch it. The bad news: that bloody Ozzie who got us into this mess in the first place and had told us that he was catching the five o´clock bus, was in fact waiting there next to the nine o´clock bus. OUR bus. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!
Eventually we arrived at Mendosa. To shut the Ozzie up we told him we were going to sleep after having an exhausting day. Thank god it worked!!
Mendosa has been really great and is one of our favourite places. Whilst here we went to the zoo and saw some class animals. One which sticks in our minds was the masturbating Chimp. This was so funny. There he is taking food with one hand and fiddling with himself with the other. These creatures have no dignity. The thing is, for such a big animal it was really really i mean incredibly small!!!!! (This is Leanne typing this by the way. I would like to state for the record that I do NOT spend much time staring at monkey genetalia) erm it kind of stuck out. They are black and this thing was bright pink, you couldnt miss it even if you were colour blind!
Moving on. . . .. . we also walked to the highest point where there is a monument of the Spirit of Independance. The walk started in the park which had an entrance similar to Hyde Park, so we felt right at home. Even the long entrance looked the same with trees lining both sides. In the round trip to this hill we walked around 10 miles but the walk was well worth while. From the top we could see all of Mendosa and beyond.
Well, that´s our latest tale to tell. Sorry it went on for so long, but it was a great experience, even though it was a bit of hassle. The moral of the story which we both learned was never to trust a Ozzie with a bad haircut. We hope you may remember this tale in years ahead and remember the message within. We´re off to Buenos Aires tonight, so we´ll let you know if we encounter any more idiots or masturbating monkeys.
Hasta Luego!
Simon & Leanne
x x x
Ferdl - 8. Jul, 10:49
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