From Singapore to Santiago: Meat, wine and long bus trips

Our blogging promptness seems to have taken on a South American concept of time – i.e. slightly later than planned! Mostly due to the fact that we've been covering some serious distance lately. In the last week or so we visited the amazing natural wonder of Iguazu Falls, eaten meat, meat and more meat and had good family times in Buenos Aires, and then had some time wine tasting and bike riding in Mendoza. But now we’ve now reached the 12^th and final country of our travels, Chile!

In South America, bus travel is easy and affordable so everyone uses it. The good news is that Argentina has some of the best buses in the world. The bad news is that you are still on a bus. Our long-distance rides have been 15, 16 and 18 hours - longer than anyone wants to be on a bus! It’s kind of similar to a plane in that you get fed, the chairs recline to 160 degrees, wine is served, movies are shown, and in one case they even organised a game of bingo! Of course it’s also kind of different from a plane due to enthusiastic braking, endless corners and oncoming bright lights at 3.45am.

In Buenos Aires, we stayed with the Bagnoli family, who are family friends of Jess’. It was so nice to be part of a family again! We had lots of good food, with the highlight being an amazing asado (Argentinian barbeque). We think we are pretty good barbequers in New Zealand, but Argentinians are on another level! Their bbq’s are designed with a fire on the left and all the meat on the right, with no direct flames below it. As the embers fall from the fire, they are then moved under the meat. The meat slowly cooks into a state of perfection over 2-3 hours. Tender, tender, tender, and utterly memorable.

One of the other highlights of Buenos Aires was that I brought Richie McCaw’s All Black shirt. Well it was an All Black jersey anyway, with a number 7 on the back. It cost $23, so it was probably the real deal.

We needed to get from Buenos Aires to Chile, a mere 25 hours via bus. We made the sensible decision to break this up with a stop in Mendoza: serious wine territory. The vineyards and neighbouring olive farms are all close to town, so it’s very easy to rent a bike and do some wine tasting. The bikes came complete with no gears and a warning not to drink alcohol and ride (difficult on a wine tour). For some reason we started with an olive tour, despite the fact that neither of us like olives. Augustin (unfortunately not Augustin Pichot, former Argentinian halfback) was one of the brothers that ran the company, and gave us a guided tour. I immediately regretted being on the tour when he said “The olives on this tree are terribly bitter. You should try it”. And so we did, and they were indeed disgusting! The man knows his olives. Thankfully we also got to try some olives that fell into the tolerable/mildly enjoyable category, and had some really good olive oil and bread.

We then went on to see (and taste) some cool vineyards. All the wine was really good, and even helped to suppress the frustration of getting a flat tire 2km from home. Moral of the story: Don’t take shortcuts down stony backroads on under-equipped bikes after an afternoon of wine tasting. Bad combination!

Continuing the bus theme, we took a beautiful bus ride from Mendoza to Santiago through the Andes mountain range. We had a long delay at the Argentinian-Chilean border, because the Chilean government was there shooting footage of the border security process. We got the most thorough bag check EVER. Unfortunately there was no dramatic smuggling activity to be filmed, although there was an unnamed, rather gorgeous, New Zealand woman who had fruit confiscated for the second time on her trip. She shall go unnamed, but her name does rhyme with Hess Florence. (If you see her in the future, ask her about the embarrassing incident with the sniffer dog and the overripe banana at the Peruvian border).

We are now on the island of Chiloe, in Chile. We are here volunteering for the next month with a family who run a tourism business. They have three energetic young girls who are a lot of fun, despite telling me I “look like a devilish man with that red beard”. I’m convinced it was a compliment.