A Passenger Van, a Mountain Pass, and a Room Full of Mattresses

We finally mustered the strength to leave Valparaiso though it was not easy. We made some fantastic connections there if any of you ever find yourself heading in that direction. I know that the three of us would all love to return someday, but the open road was calling and we have a lot of ground to cover.
On Sunday, we did a morning of stoplighting and earned our bus fare to Santiago where we spent two days running errands. These included buying 9 torches, some new books in English, and picking up the new lenses for my glasses. My old ones were so scratched that everything I saw was in dreamy vision like in some 1940´s movie when someone is waking from a deep sleep or seeing the love of there life. It was fun sometimes, but mostly it gave me a headache. You can´t walk around in a dream world all the time.
On Tuesday we boarded a small passenger can for what was supposed to be a 6-hour trip back to Argentina to the town of Mendoza, but the elements where against us. We encountered some bad weather in the pass, snow and rain and fog, and they closed the road due to a rock slide. We backtracked a little to a small mountain town to try and find some lodging for the night but found the whole town booked. We, along with the driver and other passengers, decided to crash in the van and get an early start the next day. We hung out in a lodge for a while, drinking cheap bottles of wine to aid our sleeping comfort, and feasted on the leftovers of the many people dining at the lodge that evening. We got a little giggly after our third bottle, and decided to try and find a place to sleep in the lodge and stumbled upon a godsend, a storage space in the attic at the top of a small spiral staircase full of blankets and mattresses! At closing time, we snuck up, one at a time, and nestled in, but we were so pleased with our discovery and so full of wine that our laughter (however much we attempted to muffle it) disturbed one of the live-in workers and he discovered us. Lebn interacted with him, so we can´t be certain about exactly what he said, but he must have been too tired to care, because he left us alone and we slept in comfort.
The next morning, however, we discovered that all of the doors to the outside were locked and we were trapped, though not for long. After a daring escape through the window in the ladies´room (my personal favorite detail to the entire adventure) we made it back to the van just in time to make our way to Mendoza. It was slow going, but after 20 hours, we finally made it to our destination. We headed straight to the central plaza and within 5 minutes of pulling out our clubs, were greeted by local jugglers bearing gifts and recommendations for cheap accomodations. We even bumped into some artesans that we´d met in other towns. Mendoza is lovely and the people are friendly and I have no idea how long we´ll stay, but we have to start heading North sometime.