DAY 5 - MENDOZA, ARGENTINA (Malbec country!)

A slightly torrid first night arriving after dark and a struggle to get to grips with setting up the sleeping bag in the Vadar-mobile, but it's a bright Argentine morning and we're just about sorted!

We're nearly forced to leave the camp without paying when the owner doesn't turn up - we do a turn around a nearby site (white domed pre-Columbian smelting huts, do you believe?)

and then another nip about the campsite, looking for her, to no avail; we're just pulling out, feeling the bad karma of non-payment, when she appears... All's well that ends well. 

And we're off towards Mendoza (a big town with a fiendish one-way system, so we're not venturing too far into the centre), home of prime Malbec and olive groves, concentrated in an area called Maipu, south of the city. 

First stop, the excellent LAUR olive farm,

 

to tour (ye olde discs for cold-plate pressing of extra virgin 'olive mash' - these days of course, it's all done in a centrifugal whizzer)

and taste (super-dooper platter) with their excellent balsamic.

Purchases made, onward for some red...

After meeting French owners, Philippe and Brigette (who named wines after themselves), we choose a bottle of Philippe and a top-rated Malbec.

Quite enough for one day.  Some glorious countryside and a campsite to sample our purchases. 

DAY 4 - ACROSS THE ANDES INTO ARGENTINA

Taxi to Wicked Campers' HQ to collect out transportation. Shame we arrive just after a quartet of clueless Belgians who don't seem to have a clue where they're going or what they're doing - takes at least half an hour more than needed!  Finally however we're introduced to our camper-van - may I present the Vader-mobile...

Compact but well-equipped, with only 16km on the clock!

And so on onwards towards the Andes and the border.  Top entertainment with some cracking switchbacks to climb

and eventually the crossing

An overly-optimistic misinterpretation of being waved through by a woman at Argentine customs means we're turned back 15km to the border for want of authorisation stamps (the guard chap obligingly lets us photograph a completed version of the form with the requisite stamps lest charades are needed back at the border)

so we dutifully return, explain that we've been through immigration but... Regrettably no time for La Redentor statue on the hill, as we shoot through the beautiful mountains

and it's pitch dark by the time we reach the first campsite. 

 

Not ideal for our first night wrestling with the sleeping bag! 

DAY 3 - LAST FULL DAY IN SANTIAGO

Last full day in Santiago; fortified by breakfast on our terrace, 

a three-museum day...

First stop is on the square, the Museo Historico (sadly too early to go up the tower)

with interesting models of the city, paintings of battles for independence, and a copy of the eventual declaration (signed by improbably-named general Bernardo O'Higgins)

and a range of historic artefacts

Next, another underground ride (they're very cheery with their greetings

and enormous inside)

four stops westwards to an area called Quinta Normal, where there's a park and the (rather sad - mainly mangy stuffed animals) Natural History Museum

We'd been lured here on the promise of Easter Island moa figure but that proved to be wrong; there was however live taxidermy (an oxymoron?) going on.

Last: the 2010 Museum of Memory and Human Rights, dedicated to and commemorating the victims (alive and dead) of the appalling human rights violations of the military regime between 1973 and 1990. The Pinochet coup started with the bombing of La Moneda on 11 September 1973, and the museum traces the atrocities of those tortured and the 'disappeared' through to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and seemingly endless investigations which ever eventually unearthed the truth about what actually happened to the +40,000 people (some of whom seemed chosen at random, not particularly 'opposed' to the regime all all). Horrifying, of course (an 18 year old student got on her boyfriend's motorbike in summer 1986 - timing sound familiar? - and vanished; their bodies were found in a ditch but it was only after years of denials that an investigation discovered that the local police had abducted and tortured them) but enlightening.

 
Time to clear up the apartment for a quick getaway tomorrow morning (see, I said you can see the cathedral from bed!)

and a wander through the plaza - here's Pedro Valdivia, who founded the city.

DAY 2 - OUT AND ABOUT IN SANTIAGO

This morning (fortified with a tortilla and chicken breakfast), the must-see pre-Colombian museum (marvellous as expected). Ceramics

wooden statues (apparently, very big grave'stone's)

gold

more ceramics

textiles and embroidery

yet more ceramics (you can never have too many)

Onto La Moneda, the seat of government (judging by the crowds, we'd just missed the changing of the guard)

It's not as big as once it was, though it has in part been rebuilt, after the Air Force bombed it on 11 September 1973 to do away with Salvador Allende - who'd already committed suicide, knowing Pinochet was after him.

Past an enormous flag,

and into the underground

to Cerro Santa Lucia (on the way up, you pass Neptune Fountain

and Castllo Hidalgo)