Mendoza

Hola amigos. Well, I am finally home from my whirlwind two weeks exploring Argentina. This past weekend in Mendoza was absolutely amazing, and I did more adventurous things than I've done in the entire rest of my life. Mendoza is a city to the way west on the border with Chile in the Andes. It's known for it's wine and skiing in winter. I went with my friend Hanna, who also went to El Calafate, and a sophomore guy from Madison named Kyle. We left on a coach bus ("omnibus" here) Wednesday night from the huge bus station in Retiro with just about the entire rest of the city. The terminal was the most chaotic and crowded place I have ever been. And you constantly have to be watching your stuff and be paranoid because it's a dangerous area (I caught someone unzipping my friend's backpack while we were walking a different time). Anyway, our bus was 2 hours late, and it was very stressful because there are no boards or anything telling you where to go, only a woman on the loudspeaker constantly announcing delays, gates, and bus companies over the noise. We finally got on our bus and settled in for the 13 or so hours ahead. The buses here are actually as unbelievably nice as everyone said they would be. Our seats were "semi-cama," which meant they leaned back quite far into a bed position and a little foot rest came down from the chair in front. We were served both dinner and breakfast by the two attendants on the bus. They played music, showed a movie and a concert, and generally created a fun atmosphere.

We arrived in Mendoza around noon on Thursday. We ran into a bunch of IFSA people in the bus station because just about half the program decided to go to Mendoza this weekend. We walked about 10 blocks to our hostel, Simplemente Mendoza. Kyle booked the hostel, and it ended up being a great choice. The owner, Romina, was super interesting and helpful. She is from Argentina but grew up in Chicago. She then met her husband, who is from BA, in Texas, and they moved back south to open a hostel. Through her we booked all our tours and excursions. We stayed in a 9 bed bunk room with 5 students from the University of Oregon and one student from Germany. Later in the weekend we met some other Americans in the hostel and went out with them. One is moving to Waterford, WI this summer. Weird. Also met someone from Texas with a cottage on Sturgeon Bay. Small, small world. Anyway, Thursday afternoon we just walked around the town, which was extremely dead. Mendoza has huge plazas and parks, and we enjoyed just relaxing. We got ice cream, which Mendoza is famous for, several times during the trip. The weather was also beautiful...70s and 80s, not a cloud in the sky...all weekend.

Friday afternoon we took a winery tour on a bus. We visited the now-closed but formerly biggest winery in South America, a smaller family-owned boutique one, an olive farm, and a chocolate shop. The visits included wine/olive oil/chocolate tastings, which were for the most part delicious. At the chocolate shop though we got this disgusting chocolate alcohol that no one could drink. It was super interesting to see how wine is made, and we got lessons in wine etiquette at one place. The scenery was just gorgeous driving around...big, sunny groves and lines of grapes surrounded by mountains and the clear, fast-running pre-Incan irrigation system the city if famous for (it's all fresh water running down from the Andes that allows extremely dry Mendoza to be the 5th largest wine producing region in the world). We tried a bunch of different recommended wines at various restaurants and bars throughout the weekend, and I actually enjoyed most of it, even though I'm usually not a big fan of wine.

Saturday was our big day of adventure. We were picked up early in the morning in a van and driven about an hour away into the Andes. The landscape was incredible...mountainy like all the other places I've been here but also super different because of the red clay and arid landscape. We went to the base camp of the Argentina Rafting company, which was absolutely beautiful. It is situated on the huge Mendoza river in a gorge between walls of mountain. They had lovely wooden decks and lounge chairs, an outdoor restaurant, and fun music. It felt like a mountain resort or something. Anyway, we had signed up for half a day of zip lining and half a day of whitewater rafting. I was super nervous because both activities are(clearly) not me and I would consider them too dangerous even in the U.S. But, I ended up loving them both and it was another one of the best days of my life. The zip lining consisted of getting strapped into a harness, putting on heavy gloves, grabbing onto a cable, and flying across gorges and the river hundreds of feet up in the air. It was absolutely exhilarating. We did about 7 or 8 different passes, and the best was definitely going out over the river. We were actually doing the zip lining for about an hour, then we had a nice break to eat lunch and just lounge in the sun. In the afternoon we got dressed in wetsuits, jackets, helmets, and boots to go rafting. We were driven out to the beginning of the rapids, then split up into groups. It was the three of us, a young Argentine couple, and our guide Jason. It was immediately clear that Jason spoke Spanish worse than us, and it turns out he's from Colorado and just kind of moved to Argentina with his girlfriend on a whim, started learning Spanish (a month ago), and got a job under the table from friends as a rafting guide. The rafting was AMAZING! The rapids were class 3 and 4, so it was actually pretty intense. No one fell out, but almost. We were surrounded by mountains and churning water. Saturday night on our way out to dinner we stopped in the teeming Plaza Independencia to watch a street performer set up. We ended up staying for an hour and half watching this creepy guy get children to give him their parents' money. He also juggled fire and picked me out of the crowd to help him two times, one of which involved shaking my hips and thrusting a bowling pin into the air to Aretha Franklin or someone similar. It was awkward.

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and then took about an hour walk up to Cerro de la Gloria, a peak from which you can see the entire city of Mendoza and the Andes on the border with Chile. It was a nice, if very hot, walk, and we sat up at the top by a cool statue of San Martin the liberator for awhile. After that we went out for pizza and just sat in a park again. It was a really weird Easter; my two friends aren't religious and I didn't even make it to Mass but I explained the Easter story to them when they asked and ate 12 Peeps so I suppose it was okay. The bus ride home was nice as well; they showed Slumdog Millionaire and we played Bingo with the whole bus and a prize of a bottle of wine. We did, however, have to sit on the bus in line to disembark back in BA for 2 HOURS because there was so much return traffic for the Easter holiday. Well, now I'm back in my room, about to fold the mountains of laundry I just got done. Two of Fran's friends came over for "tea" for about an hour and we drank mate, so that was fun. I still get very frustrated trying to hold a conversation though, because when they speak to each other I literally get nothing at times. Oh well. Tomorrow I have class so it's back to reality...kind of, haha. If only my life here was going to stay reality. Hasta pronto.