Mendoza

I figure while wasting time instead of reading the book i have to read, entitled "Operación Masacre" (guess what that's about), i might as well write about the trip i took this weekend to mendoza, the wine country or argentina. as you can see, mendoza borders chile and is at the foothills of the andes. being that it was a three-day weekend here in honor of Día de la Raza (Columbus Day), i went with my friend, Brooks, with whom i also went to iguazú. After a mostly sleepless 13 hour bus ride on a semi-cama (NOT as amazing as the super cama), we arrived in mendoza on friday morning to discover that the hostel i had booked for us was actually four hours outside of the city. so we hopped in a cab and asked him to take us to the main drag where there were likely to be hostels...he laughed and told us that we were never ging to find a place on the friday of a long weekend. then i punched him in the face. just kidding.
we found beds at the second hostel we tried and we happily took showers (13 hour bus rides do not exactly complement the aromas of the skin) and went to lunch as an arabic restaurant with our new roommate, a guy from northern ireland named stephen. then brooks and i walked around, took a nap, walked around some more--mendoza is an absolutely beautiful city. the weather was absolutely perfect, which made it even better. the city is centered around a main plaza, with four smaller plazas several blocks down on each side of the big one. because of the weather and the weekend, there were lots of people hanging out, mulleted boys playing soccer...picturesque indeed...minus the mullets. i will post pictures soon but the plazas were so lovely--full of painted tiles and fountains and huge trees and rainbows and unicorns and sunshiny smiles....ok maybe not rainbows or unicorns but definitely all the other stuff. in any case, in the evening we went with stephen and three other people we met at the hostel--Carina, a german girl, Lee from Manchester and Marcelo, a creepy 39-year-old argentine chef who came to get wines...and stay in a hostel...weird. anyways, they had these things called "flights" which is where you pay 45 pesos (like $15) to try 5 wines. we all decided to share two flights. it was really fun--the woman serving us explained so much about wine, it was very interesting. then at the end one of the people we were with signed up for the club thing where they send you all these wines throughout the year so one of the flights was comped so we each ended up paying 8 pesos (less than $3) to try ten wines. yay exchange rates! after that we went to dinner...then to a bar...then to a boliche (club)...at 5:45 AM we all stumbled back to the hostel. the thing was, brooks, carina and i had planned to take the 7AM bus to arco de las cuevas, the place were we had originally booked the hostel, four hours away and way up in the mountains. soooo we figured it was pointless to go to sleep for only an hour because we would never wake up, so we stayed up, left at sunrise and took the 7 am bus to las cuevas. please note that i had gotten less than three hours of frequently interrupted sleep the night before on the bus.
i slept for maybe an hour on the bus to las cuevas. the ride itself was absolutely stunning--similar terrain to that of jujuy or utah, lots of big red rock and low vegetation. four hours later, we got off the bus to find ourselves on a mountain the temperature of the arctic tundra. we had intended to spend the night at the hostel we had originally booked, but soon realized that the only way to get anywhere from it was to take one of the two buses a day that go to it. it was literally one building in the middle of nowhere intended for serious, experienced trekkers, or at least people who had foresight enough to bring coats. 15 minutes later, we got back on the bus which was turning around and got off at the first stop, a mineral formation called puente del inca (incan bridge), which is literally a bridge made out of bright yellow mineral sediment. it was amazing. there was a little feria and two hostels right next to the puente del inca, where we booked a night and put our stuff down. the hostel we chose was a "converted" train station, but believe me when i say that there was little about it that had been converted. it was a large shack with no insulation and a wood-burning stove in a place with snow on the ground. in any case, we had lunch, bought some postcards and set out to hike. we had to walk quite a ways up the road to the trailhead, but wow was it worth it. you could see the largest mountain outside of the himalayas, mount aconcagua, and there were all these lagoons that had been formed but glacier movement during the ice age. amazing. it was a good thing we had bought gloves, though, because man was it cold. the hike was short, only like half a kilometer, so we went back to the hostel after that, where we realized how much we didnt want to spend the night there (read: freezing our asses off) ten minutes before the bus left. whew. not having slept in two days and having spent the whole day schlepping, we retired fairly early that night.

we spent the morning walking around the plazas and ferias with carina and a couple from los angeles that we met at the hostel as well. the weather was a little cloudy and cold, though, so we part ways with the couple and the three of us had lunch at the best pasta place ive been to in argentina with two girls from amsterdam. after that we headed to an irish pub to watch argentina get beaten by south africa in the last final before the final final in the rugby world cup with our other new friends, lee and stephen. the game ended and we just stayed at the pub... for SEVEN hours. new people just kept coming in, inluding about 67826784264867856 irish people and by that i mean like 10 which was so fun because they were all drinking and started singing all these irish songs...oh man it was great.
then the next day brooks and i went with carina and the two dutch girls to maipú, a town 40 minutes outside of the city full of wineries. for 20 pesos (like $7) we rented bikes for the day and rode from vineyard to vineyard, tasting and touring. the weather could not have been better--not a cloud in the sky, beautiful colors...it was so amazing. we met these two israeli guys who were hilarious...all good.
that evening we took the bus back to buenos aires. it was SUCH a great weekend, made better by the fact that brooks and i have become really close and we met so many awesome people from all over the world.
i am finally caught up with the blogging, and will sign off here before i get carpel tunnel syndrome. operación masacre, here i come!