- First thing I did after I woke up was to ask the guy at the hostel to call the police department and check if the border is open. YES!!! THE BORDER WILL OPEN AT 9 AM!!!! I am officially the luckiest person on earth.
- Finished breakfast, packed, and took a cab to the bus terminal to get the earliest bus available to Santiago. I was worried that if I delay for even a minute, the border would be closed. Got ticket for a 10 am bus to Santiago - that was the 2nd to last seat left on the bus (there are tons of bus companies to Santiago, but Cata International is supposingly the most reliable bus and they refund you if for any reason, e.g. border closure, the bus is canceled). Another (relatively) long bus trip (7 hrs) for 2nd consecutive day.
- The scenery from Mendoza to Santiago is supposed to be spectacular, but I did not get the window seat and I fell asleep for half of the trip. One thing though was that I realized why the border was closed previously - there was this thick layer of snow covering the mountains and both sides of the roads along the way, signs of the heavy snow that occurred the last couple days.
- Considering I was so lucky, I should not be complaining, but crossing the Mendoza-Santiago border was atrocious. We were there for 2.5 hrs. First we waited on the bus for an hour, wondering why the fxxk we were not moving. Finally the driver asked us to get off the bus and joined the queue at Counter #1 which was the Argentina immigration booth. After Counter #1, we lined up at Counter #2 to get our stamp from Chile immigration. When we thought we were ready to continue our journey, the busload of passengers was herded to the opposite building where we 'eyewitnessed' our check-in bags/luggages go through scans and whatever detectors. 'Suspicious' bags/luggages were pulled out from the stack, and owners of those suspicious bags would step out where a thorough search would then be conducted. And we were not done. The same procedure goes for our carry-on bags, this time with the dogs. The whole process took 2.5 hours. When we saw the buses behind ours, we finally understood why we were waiting in the bus for an hour in the first place.
- Arrived Mendonza at 7:30 pm, super tired and hungry. Grabbed a bite at Mcdonalds and walked along the main street to find a hostel. Found Hostel Tales, 20 minutes from the bus terminal and Scott is super nice and informative. Perfect! Originally I had another hostel (Footsteps Backpackers) in mind, but they did not reply my email plus they are not exactly within walking distance from the bus terminal.
