Attending courses, meeting interesting international people, partying and especially traveling!
I went with 4 friends on a 10-days trip: Santiago de Chile, Mendoza and Cordoba.
Summarized: Santiago de Chile, a nice, clean city with a lot of history. Mendoza THE wine district with uncountable vineyards (bodegas). Cordoba, the second biggest city of Argentina/the student city, where springbreak 2011 took place!
Flying in south america is pretty expensive, but of course they have a perfect alternative: the bus. Sounds horrible 22 hours in a bus, but the buses are nicely equipped, lot of space and when you arrive in the Andes region you will not regret taking the bus in stead of the plain, because you will get an amazing sight-seeing tour included.
We had a fun and educative tour in Santiago, its is a free tour based on tips with a guide who puts all of his hart in telling the history of Chile. So we ended up knowing more of the history of chile than of argentina;). Valparaiso is the harbor-city close to Santiago with the best fresh fish. You can have an amazing view over the city after taking an ancient elevator up to the hill. We also did a harbor tour, you can step into a little boat and see everything close by, the army- and the container ships. In this harbor there also lives 1, yes exactly 1, Pinguin, totally adapted to the harbor-life.
In Mendoza we did the well known wine-tour by tandem(!) of mister Hugo. A really nice guy, who rents bikes and already gets you tipsy at 10.00;). We saw some beautiful vineyards, tasted really good wines, liquors, chocolate, argentine specialties and enjoyed the warm sun of the last days of winter (read: burning a little, in WINTER!).
Cordoba the place to be for springbreak! Only part we missed, is that everyone goes to a beach nearby and only high school children are in town..though we had a few nice days in Cordoba. It is a big city with a lot of character, cosy terraces, good food and friendly people. Cordoba is also surrounded by beautiful nature. We decided to do a tour guided by ourselves and had the best day ever. Walking through hills, waterfalls, small rivers, jumping from a high rock into a natural water-pool and in the end got a lift from a local farmer on the trunk.
So my advice to everyone: travel as much as you can during your exchange, with all the nice people you meet and have the best time of your life!
Differences traveling in south america so far and the netherlands/europe:
-you can go to the bus terminal and book your trip for within an hour, while its comparable to a flight
-you can have a look in the harbor by a small boot, lying next to big container ships
-on sunday everything(!) is closed, even in the biggest cities
-on wednesday all cultural buildings are for free in cordoba
-you can find find families living in the middle of no where
-you can have the best views of mother nature
-you can find hundreds and hundreds of kilometers land without anything houses or spectacular sights (las sierras)
That sounds great! I'm a little jealous to be honest! Enjoy your trips! Linda
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