Life has gotten pretty busy down here! Even just the every day - class, exploring Santiago, eating, etc has started to take up more time than I had originally imagined! Thus, here I am with less than a week and a half to go on my trip! Time isn't flying by... it's doing something much faster, I"m not sure what... zooming? That's fast, yeah?
Anyways - I have much to write about but want to start with our trip to Mendoza, Argentina as it is still fresh in my mind and chockful of stories and adventures!
Our original trip was planning for Friday - Sunday, we would end up having less than 48 hours in Mendoza.
So, this past Friday we traipsed down to the bus station (well, took a taxi) immediately after class in order to make sure that we made it in time for our 1:45 bus. The bus station is kind of on the other side of town, so we left plenty of time. We got there, found our bus... gate and then sat down to wait. One thing about South AMerica in general is that times are more or less negotiable- especially when international bus travel is involved. So, we sat around for about an hour and a half and feasted on pita bread and nutella, chocolate, and chips (the lunch of champions.) Our bus pulled in around 2:30, we boarded, and off we went!
As we were boarding they were checking passports, making sure everything was in order. I didn't have an original paper from when I came into Chile (which apparently I needed...) I asked the bus driver about it, he kind of shrugged and ushered me onto the bus. Presumably he wouldn't have let me on if I couldn't make it across the boarder... but we were all a little unsure as he didn't really say much to me. Once we were about 15 minutes into our trip I was able to ask one of the other bus drivers to which he immediately said "no, you can't cross the boarder with out it." I sat in panic while he went to double check with the other driver. He came back and said that it wouldn't be a problem, and on we went! So, a brief moment of panic, but that was all.
After a beautifulllllllll drive through the Andes (we went over the highest point in the Andes!) we arrived in Mendoza. But really, the drive alone was worth the bus ticket. It was just unreal - beautiful mountains and streams and houses and ranches, there just aren't words to describe it all! I have tons of pictures that I'm working on posting - so you can look at those eventually :)
Mendoza is an incredibly beautiful little city. It has wide roads and sidewalks, most of them are beautifully lined with trees. Every few blocks there are beautiful, open Plazas with fountains, beautiful homes, and no smog! I am definitely planning on studying there next summer... and possibly moving there for a while eventually. Something about it, the quiet bustling of the city, the streets, the homes, the shops, everything was just perfect!
We stayed in a wonderful little hostel that was in a fun part of town - lots of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and stores right around it so everything was easy to get to. When we were checked in and whatnot we headed out to find food. We found a really nice little restaurant, sat down, and began to try to decipher the menu. Because we were in Argentina, I figured I should have some wine. Judging by the price, I assumed that I would be getting a glass of wine (it was about $4 US) but nope! I apparently had ordered a whole bottle (no wonder the waiter looked at me funny when I had said that was just for me...) To my delight, it was some delicoussss wine (you couldn't wine that good, at that price, anywhere in the US)
The food was also amazing, we had big steaks (mine was with a great mushroom sauce) and we had a fun time just hanging out, eating and drinking. We also became aware of the fact that there's a time difference between Mendoza and Santiago (good to know!) so we were eating at about 11:30pm, just like true Mendozans! The long say of traveling, and the wine, had us pretty tuckered out so we headed back to the hostel to get a good nights' sleep before our wine and bike tour!
Saturday morning we got up, ate a delicious breakfast of dulce de leche, coffee, corn flakes, and juice at our hostel (included in the price of the hostel) and then got picked up for a wine/bike tour that was arranged by our hostel.
We started out at an older vineyard, whose name I am blanking on at the moment but I'll look up later, and got a full tour and tasting! Because it's winter here, there wasn't a WHOLE lot to see, but the vineyard is still gorgeous and it was neat to see the whole wine making process. Argentina is best known for its Malbec wine (super good red wine)
We then all hopped on our bikes and biked down the road to another winery. We had a van following us and a guide leading us, so we were very safe. Granted, I can't imagine that wine and bikes usually mix... but no one got hurt!
The 2nd winery was much more modern, but still super interesting! Again, got a full tour and then got to taste some of the goods. It seemed like in general the processes were very similar, just different equipment used in order to process the grapes and separate the grapes from the stems. It was really interesting just to see it all as I don't know a whole lot about wine and whatnot. I do know that it's quite delicious, but that's really more or less the extent of my knowledge. We did learn the proper way to taste a wine (smell it, swirl it in the glass and smell again, put in your mouth and... daintly gargle it or whatever you call it, to get air through it, then taste it again because it's acidic and your mouth reacts differently the first taste than the 2nd taste, then enjoy!)
On our tour there was a group of college students from Colorado College (which is very close to Denver, and also where my brother went to college) so that was kind of funny, small world!
Anyways, we then biked on to the 3rd winery, where we had a much shorter stay. The woman just kind of talked about the wines they have then let us try one. We didn't get a tour, but from what I've gathered a winery is a winery, and while there are subtle differences - the process is always more or less the same, so it was alright to skip the tour.
So, after a delightful morning of chatting with the other people on the tour (in Spanish and English), tasting wine and biking through the beautiful Mendoza wine country - we got back on the bus and drove home.
As we hadn't had lunch yet, we were starving so we were across the street to an incredible pasta restaurant. We inhaled heaping plates of pasta in various forms (I settled on a spectacular meat ravioli with a creamy garlic/basil sauce) and downing glasses of coca-cola, we were ready for some exploration in Mendoza. We walked up to the beautiful main park of the city (modeled after Central Park in NYC) and wandered through the quiet tree lined streets of the park. We came across a lovely little lake/pond on which people were rowing! While it's fun to watch rowers now, I still don't ever have the desire to step back into a shell. The weather was perfect, a beautiful, sunny, warm fall day (you needed a light jacket, but that was all)
Later that night we went out to a restaurant with some French guys that we met at the hostel - so I was able to practice my Spanish and French as they didn't really speak English. While at dinner one of them mentioned that the pass to Chile was closed on Saturday AND Sunday (we were supposed to leave on Sunday.) We kind of freaked out when we heard that, but didn't think too much of it as we didn't know any details.
Sunday morning we confirmed that there was too much snow in the Andes to allow traffic to travel over the mountains. So, we hiked down to the bus station, waited in line, and changed our bus tickets to Monday. Thankfully the process was totally seamless, they just took our passports, our old tickets, and put us on the first available bus out in the morning. Little did we know that we wouldn't be leaving until Wednesday morning... but I'll write about that in later posts!
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