El Puente del Inca y Uspallata

To get from Mendosa to Chile, you pass by a spectacular mountain pass and drive through a beautiful mountain landscape. A thing to see is the 'Puente del Inca', a sort of bridge made of salt, 50 metres wide and 8 metres broad, pending 30 metres above a río. A few kilometres further away there is a mirador with a good view on the Aconcagua, with its 6.959 metres the highest peak in Latin America! It is very hard to believe the mountain is almost 7.000 metres high, though, the mirador is under 3.000 metres and when I was standing there, looking at it, I had difficulties imagining it is another 4.000 meters higher.

The region there is gorgeous, definetly good for a few days of trekking. We hitchhiked (hacer el dedo in Spanish) back to Uspallata and were picked up by a lovely couple from Buenos Aires, on their way back from holidays in Chile. Back in Upsallata, we, that is Katrien, a girl from Ghent I had met in Mendosa and me, tried to arrange a bus to Chile, but everything seemed to be booked, so we had to spend another night in Argentina. Next day, we tried to hitchike again with a paper saying 'Chile' in our hands and were taken by a little bus on its way to Santiago. We had to pay though! From Santiago, we took the bus straight to Valparaiso. Yet, another country, very exciting!
Chile seems even richer and more western than Argentina. As a consequence, living is more expensive than in Argentina. If accomodation prices doubled from about 2-3 US dollars per night in a dorm in Bolivia to 5-6 in Argentina, they have doubled again to 10-12 dollars in Chile! The prices of food have risen in the same proportion. There are some friendly people here, but a thing that strikes me is that people in shops are very unfriendly. Like yesterday, for example, when I went to buy a ferry ticket in Puerto Montt, the woman who was 'helping' me was so scarce on information I literally had to ask everything, very bizarre. The same story when I went buying camping material in Bariloche. But than, on the other hand, in Santiago, I went looking for an envelope that fitted an LP to send it home and I found one in a shop with a lovely girl serving me and giving me the envelope for free because there was a little cut in it.