Ahhh: the borders!!!!

Did you know that Chileans and Argentinians love each other like the US everyone else? That crossing was the best till now: seeing a yellow truck coming from Argentina the Chili-Police couldn't resist. Result: Border-rape for 30 tourists. Since this dog was just trained for finding fruits and vegetables, we could pass through easily, in 8 hours and get to Santiago at 23:00, just to see every food source shut down before our eyes.

But first things first. Our first stay in Argentina was Salta. We spent New Years Eve there and were pretty lucky to be at the one camp side to be crossed by the Dakar Race in South America. The way between my tent and the bar was guarded by Carlos Sainz and all his friends in bikes, quads and cars. The trucks couldn't drive that section, for it was too narrow. So the whole day consisted in surviving the road-crossing and trying to get a picture of two of our heroes. :P

The same camp side offered some insane zip-lines (some more than 400m long and reaching from one mountain to the other) and a white water rafting level 3. Tomorrow I'm doing some 5 rafts, really looking forward to it!!

The next stop in Argentina was Cafayate. A white wine region. What else to do as getting some air on the campings water slide and severly burn themselfs with the dry part of it and check on the bodegas in the afternoon? We drove around from winary to winary with our rented bikes. Don't believe a single one got back in its original state... La mia l'ho dovuta mettere sul retro di un pick-up, in modo da poter rientrare in centro.

Mendoza, the biggest red wine region in south america disappointed me for it's wine, but not for the city itself. We had great parties with locals and became best friends with all of the alley dogs of the city. The city is the prettiest so far, and its inhabitants are exceeding friendly. Mostly because I'm italian and I talk funny.

Apropos funny italian: 10 people of the group left us in Santiago and 8 new ones joined.

The chance of a complete new start was taken by most of us, so nearly everyone created a new himself. The most succesful so far is: "Hi, hi ham meo, fromme pisa, italia!" The new people are really scared of me and try to avoid me, because these are kind of the only words I know in english. Fortunately the old guys on the tour know me and are pretty keen in trying to make me understand the sentences' meaning. So i can get along, speaking spanish to some Aussie-dudes, who just speak english and pronounce every single english word in the most italian way there is. An now hi musta leave... hi'm the cook. cook the dinner. ciao!