This is Getting Re-Damn-Diculous

Well, we got robbed again. Some lucky/jerkass Chileno now has the second camera, our cell phone, a handful of our clothing, all of our toiletries, Erin’s backpack, and three English books. It was definitely a step up, though, because this time it was done behind our backs and not face-to-face. It’s far more satisfying, we’ve discovered, to find out afterwards that you’ve been robbed, rather than experience it first-hand. It doesn’t feel like quite such a violation. Should Erin ever decide to break up with me, I hope to find out in a similar fashion, realizing she’s not there after a couple days.

The whole thing started with our trip to Mendoza. With a tourist visa, you have to leave the country at least once every three months for a night to renew it. Lucky for us, Chile is only about three hundred kilometers wide at its thickest, so the border is never far away. The wait at the border, however, is generally pretty long, mostly because the international customs folks are completely understaffed. After a failed first attempt to catch a bus, we decided to take the one that left at 8:30 in the morning to beat the traffic and get to Mendoza early. Naturally, when we got to the pass through the Andes, it was still closed down from the previous day’s snow, so while the bus sat in line for an hour and a half, Erin and I walked up and down the road, which was completely packed with people throwing snowballs at each other. It was like a giant international snow day.

When the pass finally opened, our bus driver took off like he was a NASCAR driver. We were passing and double-passing tour busses on blind turns on this tiny little one-lane highway that was covered in snow on either side. Every time we’d reach a switchback, the passenger riding shotgun would look up over the next stretch of road and tell the driver whether it was okay to speed around another bus. It turns out there was a reason for all of this, because by the time we reached the border we were in front of everybody who had been ahead of us in the traffic jam, and we got through customs in about twenty minutes. It was the most psychotic/amazing display of driving I’ve ever witnessed.

Mendoza was equally amazing. Unbeknownst to us, we’ve been living in some sort of an upper-class slum (Santiago) for the past two and a half months. Although Chile is economically superior, with way more jobs and better pay, it turns out that the standard of living is insanely better in Argentina. The result is that when you go to Argentina from Chile, it’s like you’re the king of the country. You have way more money than the average Argentinean and all of a sudden there’s access to all sorts of nice things you don’t see in Santiago. For dinner, we ate at the fanciest, most expensive restaurant that we could find, got a bottle of wine and two-inch-thick steaks, and still only paid about ten dollars each. It was unbelievable. On top of the cheapness, the town is beautiful. There are all kinds of cafes and restaurants, a casino, and tons of nice plazas. It also has the biggest park in South America, every bit of which is meticulously landscaped. There was even a rowing club with its own lake. The craziest thing is that it’s located in the middle of a desert but is greener than Santiago. Enough runoff comes from the snow in the Andes that the people never have to worry about water. Argentina is also the meat capital of the universe, which puts it high in the running for actual capital of the universe. They must slaughter herds of cattle on a daily basis, because steaks and sausages are practically spilling out the doors of the shops and restaurants. The highlight of all of this is the bife de chorizo, which is a steak about two inches thick and the size of a dinner plate.

Everything about Mendoza was completely phenomenal, up until it was time to leave. Bus tickets can get bought up fast, so we had purchased our return tickets the day before when we arrived. We had a pretty relaxed morning walking around the parks and having breakfast at a cafe, and we went to the bus station what should have been thirty minutes early, just to make sure we'd get out okay. It turns out, we were thirty minutes late. It was daylight savings time, and all the clocks had been switched forward that morning. No one had told us. Since the bus company refused to give us our money back or let us switch to a later bus (and consequently didn't want any more of our buisness due to a strong reaction by Erin regarding its country's completely unfair decision to change the time without consulting us) we had to buy a second set of tickets from another company. The hostel owners were very nice, however, and let us leave our bags with them while we spent an extra seven hours moaping around the city. Erin made sure to reset the watch.

Our second try at leaving Mendoza had mixed results. We were successful in leaving the city but unsuccessful in not getting robbed, although we didn't find out that it had happened until we reached the border. The border going from Argentina to Chile is much more complicated than the other way, probably because Argentina is so cheap and lots of people want to smuggle goods back to Chile. Customs has an x-ray machine and random baggage checks, all of which makes the process of getting through slower. It was during the baggage checks that Erin first realized that her backpack was not on the bus. We don't know what happened exactly, but our position in dealing with the bus company (which we think seems pretty likely) was that after Erin loaded her bag into the luggage compartment of the bus, either the sketchy non-bus-company-employee guy (who makes his money by taking your bag from you when you're literaly a foot from the bus, putting it on the pile, and then demanding a tip) or someone else took it back out and walked off. At any rate, it was gone when we got to the border, and we'll likely (most definitely) never see it again.

We've spent the last two days trying as hard as we can to hold the bus company responsible for their crappy handling of our luggage. This was made much more difficult by a couple factors. They immediately claimed that it was Erin's fault for not watching her bags 100% of the time. They also did their damnedest to avoid any contact by phone with us, which was already difficult since neither of us is fluent enough in spanish to argue a dispute (big disadvantage), and kept bouncing us back and forth between the Santiago and Mendoza offices. What finally saved our asses was the fact that we rent a room from the nicest people ever. Jorge, the owner of our house, heard about our problem and offered to help us out (do pretty much everything for us). First he argued with people on the phone for us, threatening police action. Then, he went down to the station to talk to the company while we were at work. He even stood outside their office telling people they were dishonest and irresponsible. When everything was finished, he and I had to go down to the station and sign a contract saying that for 90,000 pesos (about 180 dollars) neither of us would ever bother them again. We got the money in cash, on the spot, and now Erin and I are trying to figure out something nice we can do for him.