Mendoza

Two weekends ago I was faced with a sudden dilemma. I found out that Thursday night that a bunch of the other volunteers, all of whom got to Santiago before me, were going to Buenos Aires for a week. Essentially, I was faced with two options: hang out in Santiago by myself all weekend, or make some last-minute travel plans.
This is the story of those last-minute travel plans.

With about fifteen minutes to spare, I left Coanil for the day, found tickets online to Mendoza, Argentina, found a place to print them, figured out which bus station I needed to go to, packed all everything I would need, and headed to the bus station. Excellent.

A view of Mendoza from the top of Cerro de la Gloria

Overnight bus rides are awful. I don't understand how people sleep because I certainly didn't. It also didn't help that we had to get off the bus for about two hours at the border crossing at right about the time that I was finally falling asleep.

Not to whine, though. My bus pulled into Mendoza bright and early and I could tell immediately that I was going to like it.  It's more what I imagined Santiago would be like. A bit smaller. Significantly less smoggy. I definitely got a feel for the city in the two days I was there, which means that it wasn't too big. Argentina is also cheaper, slightly warmer, and had better-tasting water. In fact, to my dismay I liked Mendoza a lot more than I like Santiago. I think this will be a recurring theme throughout my travels.

The nice thing about traveling by yourself is that you can either be alone or meet new people. I sat down with three people who were sitting together. One couple (Mike and Sheridan) from Australia, and one British dude named Chris. Chris told me he was thinking about renting a bike and going to the wineries outside of Mendoza for the day. I told him that I was on board with that plan. We grabbed a third person, a girl named Leanne from Chicago, and grabbed the next bus to Maipu, the wine district right outside of the city.

Let me put this in perspective for you. Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina. Probably the wine capital of South America. There are more than 356,000 acres of wineries in Mendoza. That's 560 square miles. ABSURD. The ones we went to were all within five miles of each other, though, so don't worry: I didn't injure myself trying to cover 560 square miles in a single day.

We stopped first at this museum which gave a free glass of wine to everyone that stopped by. We ran into this couple (a Welsh couple, Steph and Adrian) there that Chris had met a few times before: first in Montevideo, then in Buenos Aires. They decided to join us as well.

The three Trapiche wines we tasted.

The five of us split off a bit next. Leanne and I took a turn and went to this little chocolatier that also served us candied liquor. I got this chocolate banana liqueur that tasted delicious if you held it in your mouth and promptly burned when you swallowed it. The chocolate was also delicious.

Our third stop (my personal favorite) was at the Trapiche winery. We got an hour-long tour of the facilities from this really good tour guide, and then we tasted three different wines. The second wine came from a $40 bottle and it was probably the best wine I've ever had. A 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon aged in French oak for a year. I didn't know wine could be that good. I'm talking whole new levels of wine awesome. You have no idea until you've had something like this.

The next place was way further than we thought. Adrian's bike broke so a bunch of them were going slower, but I decided that I had a need for speed and went up ahead. This was my favorite part of the day, I think, because the sun was just right and the trees were beautiful and the grapevines with the Andes overlooking them and I was in the shade and everything was perfect. I don't ever want to forget that image.

The aforementioned picturesque road. I love it.

The fourth and final stop was the oldest winery in all over Argentina. 1872, I think. Familia di Tommaso. Their wine was really good too. I got a chance to try the Argentine Malbec. The young Malbec, which is what my Mom and Dad tend to get back home, was exactly as acidic as I remember it being. However, aged Malbec, Malbec from oak barrels...was phenomenal.

Anyway. Enough of my winenerdiness.

By the time I got out of bed on Saturday morning all of the tour groups had left, so I decided to bike around Mendoza and check out the sights by myself. Problem was, the hostel was out of bikes and the other hostel I stopped to check out was locked. Dang. So I walked around in flip-flops.

I got a traditional Argentinian steak for lunch. It was eight dollars. It was also probably the best steak I've ever had. I was so happy.

Cool statue/monument thing in the park. Note the massive
aloe vera plants, holy crap those things are enormous.

My walk started in the shopping district, but to my dismay most of the shops were closed. I am still not sure whether I think this is because it was a Saturday or because it's not December through March ("tourist season" down here). Probably was a combination of both.

I headed to the park after that. Mendoza has this massive park at the west edge of the city. It's beautiful and awesome. It also was severely underutilized, I think - not nearly enough people were just walking around and doing stuff. I feel like I would go sit in this park every day if I lived in Mendoza.

In the middle of the park is this hill called Cerro de la Gloria. The top gave these awesome views of the city to the east and the Andes to the west. There was also this extremely large monument at the top to the Spanish "liberators" of the Andes. Very awesome. Perhaps even cooler was my view on the way down of people going down another cerro on BIKES. It was ridiculously steep. I kept thinking how intense that must be until I realized I have gone down much steeper hills on skis.

View from the top of Cerro de la Gloria, the non-Mendoza
side.

The policía were nice enough to spot me a ride down to the park. At that point I walked past the city's lake (gorgeous), got extremely lost in Godoy Cruz, and then finally made it back to the hostel.
All in all, the walktook five hours. Awesome. I had huge blisters but I didn't even care. I just took off my sandals and walked barefoot the rest of the way.

Three things from the rest of the walk. First, this massive lake with ducks and stuff that looked just perfect. Second, I got utterly lost on my way back to the hostel. It was so bad it's not even funny. And third, by FAR the funniest thing I've seen in Chile so far, was this aerobics class going on in the park. They had this huge stage set up with some sort of Richard Symons-type aerobics instructor on the stage leading maybe two hundred Chilean women through a routine with techno music blasting. I had to stop walking I was laughing so hard. I wish I took a picture; at the time it seemed like it would have been creepy, but in hindsight I don't really care.

The lake in the park. Gorgeous, eh?

Fell asleep immediately when I got back to the hostel...I walked around for six hours that day for crying out loud. I took the bus back to Santiago the next morning. The views out the bus window during the day were phenomenal, and I had enough foresight to book seats in the front on the top level of the double-decker. This gave me a panoramic view of the Andes mountains for about six hours. Awesome.

I wasn't really ready to leave Mendoza. I like that the city was self-contained instead of a sprawl like Santiago, and it was nice to venture off on my own and do something completely cool and unique.

Work is still going pretty well. I'm starting to get some of my own ideas as to how to actually help these kids out a little more. My biggest idea so far has been to create a sort of poster board so that the kids who can't talk but would like to can communicate more effectively with their eyes or by pointing to pictures on the poster board. More details on this project later.

Spanish Word of the Day: Carne asada. Roasted meat, in the traditional style. Delicious. Yes, I know that's two words.

Next Time on 11Santiago: Adam heads down south to hike an active volcano, along with more updates on Coanil and my other adventures.

-Adam