Smokey Santiago

Daring Chilean firemen ascend into the fire, previously known as my bunk bed. I like to think that the blurriness of this photo adds to the drama of the situation, but really I just had the shutter speed too low.

Ole Jas is pretty pumped to get on the Santiago subway.

Weaving our way through the Andes, and yes, I got a wee bit carsick.

After leaving Bariloche (Adios Carl & Condorman!) the three of us headed up to Mendoza for a few days. Had a great bus ride there with non-stop hit movies like White Chicks and 40 Year Old Virgin. My constant string of bad luck in contests finally came to a grinding halt when I won the Andesmar (bus company) bingo tournament. I was awarded with a bottle of wine and addressed as "the winner" for the remainder of the ride. I was extremely nervous during the acceptance speech and only managed to mutter out a simple "gracias", but nonetheless it was quite an event and I'd like to thank everyone involved. Mendoza was a little bit different than we expected, tad bit boring. We took a wine tour on our first full day there but were only able to make it to a single winery. The problem being that we have now fully acclimatized ourselves to an Argentina schedule, meaning that its strange to go to bed before 5am and quite normal to wake up at noon. Given this, our wine tour consisted of us walking around Maipu (pronounced My-poo, and yes, no matter how old we get there were plenty of jokes made at this town's expense) for a few hours prior to the places closing, hence only visiting one. Our hostel held an Asado one night, which is an Argentinian BBQ. Pretty good time although something went horribly wrong with Jas's meal and he lay bedridden for the entire following day. Him and I hopped over the Andes this afternoon and are now in Santiago. So far it seems like a decent city, feels similar to Buenos Aires, although the smog here is so thick I can barely see the screen. Went for a coffee at an interesting place today, but other than that we plan to do the majority of sightseeing tomorrow. Following that, on wednesday we'll head north to the Peruvian border!

Interesting note...I was kicked out of the internet cafe (it was closing) as I was finishing this entry up, so I saved it and returned, defeated, to my hostel. Jas and I started watching a few movies, and were half way through Lord of War, when we were told to get out of the hostel because of a fire. I ran upstairs to grab my bag and apparently the fire was in my room, or rather, just underneath my room. Some people were standing at the top of the stairs insisting our things were lost based on the amount of smoke billowing out of there, but after calculating the risk and peeking around the corner I heroically (or stupidly?) entered the inferno (there wasnt actually any visible fire, just a lot of smoke climbing up between the floorboards...) with a shirt wrapped around my head and saved the aforementioned items. Not to worry mother, at no point was my life at risk, except for that one point.... The rest of the evening has been spent watching the firefighters defeat the blaze, finding our new hostel and letting my smoke contaminated gear air out. More of a funny story than an adventure, but it did get the old adrenal glands going for a minute.