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Wednesday 8th May 2013 - we arrived in Mendoza sometime just after 9am after a really uncomfortable journey where we had hardly any rest at all. I was so sticky and hot and glad to get off the bus. We made our way straight inside the terminal, it was much hotter here than buenos aires so we decided against the walk to the hostel. We knew it was not far but for an advertised 10 peso, with all our luggage we thought it best to taxi it even with a pretty long queue. The taxi was actually 15 in the end but whatever we weren't fussy. When we arrived, when we arrived Fito the receptionist first greeted us after walking inside this very colourful hostel called internacional. We were given a glass of wine to welcome us and told they drink wine here all the time. He showed us a map of the city, one we had already received by a strange man in the terminal, and explained numerous things we could do. He advised us of all the tours available and how doing different tours together in combos meant it was cheaper. He also showed us what we could do with our day today which included walking to the park, lake and city center. I had previously emailed Caroline the manager, and she arrived as we were checking in. She said hello to us and introduced herself and told us to have another glass of wine with her and fito, so we raised all out glasses in the air and shouted "salut". We checked in and quickly decided to grab a nap to catch up on our uncomfortable journey here. Once we had caught up on this sleep we decided to follow Fito's advise and go get some cash so we could afford some of the trips we had decided to book. We ventured down to the Main Street near us San Martin which was only two blocks from Av Espana where we were staying. We managed to retrieve some cash from one of the machines. Nicki made the same mistake I did in BA and left her card in the machine. Easy mistake when they ask you if there's anything else you want in a foreign language. Haha. We walked along this road and you can't help but notice the irrigation in this city is crazy. All along the sides of the roads are enormous ditches which always carry water. I'm surprised you don't find people in them as there quite a fall! We stopped by the river which has been entirely reshaped with hard engineering - literally flowing straight through the city. No signs of a river bank in this town. On the riverside was a little place that we decide to buy a 2 litre bottle of water from as nicki and I became very thirsty. The sun at this point was really hot so we pulled our sleeves up and sat in the sun. A few minutes later we decided to go inside and order a large salad to share. The salad was less than a quid and filled us up perfectly. It gave us the energy to walk west towards the enormous park. We followed the redeveloped river all the way to the park where it veered off south. A lot of construction work was going on at Av boulogne sur mer (the street running along the park parallel). We hopped over the building site and found a very open park. At first sight it was not too impressive but the heat was entertaining us, but then we found a beautiful lake offering great walking paths and views. We walked across a bridge and onto an island in the middle of the lake, which felt like our own whilst we we were the only people sunbathing on it whilst people canoed around us. After the sun started disappearing behind the trees that surrounded the lake we thought it time to head home for some food. We walked a different route home and nicki joked that I should visit the local salon because I was getting a mushroom hairstyle. I know she loves it really. Once we got back we paid for our tours and wrote our name down for the pizza party that evening. We saw someone else had the name Nicola and had written her surname to differentiate. We popped back to the room to quickly get ready for our pizza party. Once ready we purchased a beer from the hostel and sat by the kitchen drinking. Caroline the manager sat with us and we spoke about Europe as she was from south Belgium. We talked about both our travel plans and she gave us a free drinks card for later that evening. When we ran out of beer she bought us another one stating the perks of being manager are you get to buy drinks for nice customers. We started to feel a little tipsy as we had not eaten to save ourself for the pizza party. We spoke to Caroline about how lovely the hostel was and how much we appreciated the help from her and Fito and we told her we would give the hostel a great rating. After Caroline had to leave we decided to move closer to the bar and wait with the others that had booked for the pizza. We met a couple from merseyside called nic and lee. They had been on a really amazing trip going to Asia, Auz and finally here. They gave us some good tips for Asia travel which is probably on the agenda sooner rather than later. We shared a taxi with them whilst Ruben a German guy who had stayed at the hostel for a while, and a French guy who was also the chef at the hostel it in another taxi. The receipt from the taxi got you another free drink at the party which was handy. We all sat on the large table expecting lots of people but not many came. I spoke to a Norwegian girl about a trip I had taken to Oslo and she laughed at how me and nicki couldn't roll our "R" which probably means we are always going to struggle with Spanish. Even the R in her name Christina I couldn't say probably. Apparently! Next was a fairly annoying 19 year old girl from Epsom who sat next to me. She was eating the pizza despite not paying and was fairly loud, stating she loved drinking red wine in the park or something, whilst shouting at two lads who I think we're arguing. I gave a great effort at showing them that if they write unlimited pizza I will take their word for it. Some pizza was burnt, some was nice. It wasn't great but I was starving. Before too long they were coming out asking if anyone else wanted more which I constantly replied "yep" to. Soon enough the amount of meat slowly reduced and they were trying to fill me up with plane cheese and tomato pizza. Poor effort I thought, but I eventually folded. I realised once the pizza was cleared away that free shots were inclusive but I had eaten so much I couldn't man a shot. With an early morning I had no desire to get any more drunk than I was. There was no tequila which was promised and its one of the few shots I don't mind so when people turned to vodka I turned to the exits! Especially after the BA night. We left the French chef etc to the party at around 1am and walked back to the hostel with Ruben and our friends nic and lee who were also writing a blog on this site. Nicki and I had the room to ourself so we managed to get some good sleep even with a very uncomfy pillow.
Thursday 9th May 2013 - Today is the day we had booked on the famous bike wine tour. We woke up with a bit of a hangover and I had woke up a couple of times in the morning to drink a shed load of water to rehydrate. The tour was at 9:30am so we scurried down to breakfast by around 8:45. There were hard boiled eggs which I put into a sandwich, a bit of fruit and some cereal so not bad considering. We saw the van was outside but they had to collect the bikes first so we had a little longer to fill up on some croissants. We said hello to the bus passengers on our tour and realised we were the only English. A Vietnamese guy from Texas was the only other guy who wanted the tour in English so we had a 50/50 tour for a Brazilian and two Canadians who knew Spanish and a Mexican. Our first stop was to a family winery that was fairly small it was only 20 minutes drive from our hostel and it was nice to look out of the window at the Andes mountains and fields of rows and rows of vineyards. Your eye went as far as you could see of these vines until they met the mountains, it's a beautiful place Mendoza. The family winery was called Cecchin established as it is today in 1959. But the building is from the 1800's, I believe it changed to a larger family business who took over the building. A really nice lady took the tour and taught us about the perks and negatives of running a organic family winery like this. They have orange trees in the middle of the winery to attract the insects to instead of focusing on the grapes so the yields are totally dependant on the variables of weather and pests. Also the winds get really bad here as the wind comes in from the pacific and due to the atmosphere at the mountains the moisture is removed and very dry winds can damage the grapes. To counter this they plant love trees around the grapes, so they can also produce olive oil as well. There is not much water around here as the area is desert and very arid. The amount of rain is normally perfect for grape growth as they don't need much water in comparison to some crops. We went through to see how the grapes are moved along and separated from the storks and stems. If the wine is fermented with the skin or without this will greatly affect what kind of wine will be produced. The tanks are literally massive, it's hard to imagine how many bottles they produce of one harvest but I bet it's a hell of a lot. This tiny winery delivers to loads of countries including one type to England. Yay! They gave us the label they put on it and its called Twigs. Nicki was asking lots of questions and the woman told her she loved her accent. We began tasting the wine and my favourite was the Cabernet Sauvignon or the Malbec. They told us that Melbec actually meant bad taste as the Europeans thought it didn't taste great. Strangely it's one of the most popular here in Argentina. It is known for producing the best Malbec in the world. After a couple of glasses we hopped onto the bikes and cycled out of the winery taking some great pictures of the dirt track out along the grapevines. My handle bar was a bit loose but apart from that the bikes were alright. We cycled along a busy road for about 20 minutes following our tour guide Marion, who was described as crazy by the last winery. The next winery was a much larger one called Vistandes and the building was only built in 2007. The fermentation tanks were enormous and made out of huge metallic cylinders with little grooves on to regulate temperature. This little tour guide was a man who decided to do the tour only in English so I'm not sure what the Spanish speaking people thought at times. They used only gravity here to transport the wine as they had built tanks underground to catch the wine once fermented. Apparently using the pipes to remove the wine influences the wine negatively at times by using suction or whatever so this was their point of difference I guess. After the tour I felt this place was a little more geared up to try and sell you the wine after. They had a Carmenere, which was voted 5th best in the world so that was their most expensive. I quite liked this, and yet their merlot which I normally like was pretty horrid. They said their average harvest gave around 200,000 bottles, and everyone was ranting and raving about the 2003 harvest which was apparently epic. Feeling relatively tipsy we appreciated the water they provided as by now the day was getting very warm as it approached mid day. Nicki jumped on her bike and the tour guide told her that one wasn't hers, she got off and climbed on another sheepishly asking me "aren't they all the same" the tour guide burst out laughing saying it was a joke and that they were all the same. We cycled to the third and final winery which was a beautiful ride running parallel with the Andes mountain range the whole way. Nicki got cut up by one of the fat Canadian girls who was too inpatient to cycle behind. When we approached this one we could see that they had a lot of land, despite the fact that the building looked a lot more basic, like a wooden shed really. The tour guide had basic English but it was still easy to understand, she showed us the foods you could eat with their wines and the smells and tastes to expect. The Sirah was my favourite and the one we tried. It was another one of these 2003 harvests which were apparently magical. Haha. We thought we'd try the most expensive but there was one that they wouldn't let us taste because there was only 2000 bottles produced. Here we saw how they remove all the skins as we saw a like of grape skins on the floor near the fermentation tanks. Basically the rose they produce was mixed white and red. But the first winery just removes the skins early to give it a more pale colour. I much preferred the first winery we visited but the thing is with organic wines without the preservatives in means the bottle never lasts more than 10 years and once opened it has to be consumed quickly. When we left the van was ready waiting for us to take us back to our hostels as the tipsy feeling was now making me hungry. On route back it was funny to see a road called Rioja despite not having any on the wine tour. We arrived home first and said goodbye to our tour buddies, on arrival back Caroline made us have another glass of wine joking that we have not had enough, we didn't say no ha. From here we thought we should walk to the bus terminal to organise our travel from here to Santiago, it was fairly easy to find and without our bags easy to walk to. We got some cash out near the 30th platforma and headed to the company called Tur-Bus who Caroline had recommended as they were a Chilean company and Argentinian bus strikes had began again because they had not got the demands they wanted even after several government meetings. It was easy to book our bus and only cost the equivalent to £20 each, not bad to cross a border. Once booked we took the walk up the Main Street calle Montevideo. We took a few photos of a large church and then went in search of the supermarket Fito had told us about. The supermarket was ace with loads in, we bought a bottle of diet coke, ham, cheese, steak, chips and mixed vegetables. When we got back we saw Lee and Nic who had their wine tour later on, but they were late picking them up. Caroline helped us light the oven and we cooked an amazing steak and chips with veg. The steak was massive! We decided to grab a beer and play pool. Nicki won because I potted the black, then she won fair and square! Luckily I won the last 3 games but still she's good! After a while we met up with a guy called Robbie from Scotland and a girl called Serena from N. Ireland they had been travelling with each other for a while, we invited them up to play pool with a Swedish guy called Jacob that they were drinking with. We played killer and then we opted for a game where we have a selected number of balls to pot. We had a few more beers but then turned to bed around midnight as we had an incredibly early morning the next day since we were climbing the Andes. Once in bed we had a nice chat with Nic and lee who had moved into the same dorm as us.
Friday 10th May 2013 - up we got nice and early trying to be as quiet as possible because nic and lee were still asleep. I felt bad because we constantly kept forgetting things and going back into the room like the camera and then our tour guide said we needed to put warmer clothes on so we had to go in again. I hope we didn't disturb their sleep too much. We had a quick breakfast and packed our cheese and ham and bread that we bought yesterday and set off on the 200km round trip tour. The Mexican girl and Brazilian girl that were on the wine tour yesterday must have bought the combo package like us as we said our hello again. The drive took a long time so we stopped for a toilet break at a little roadside cafe with wifi, we ran to the toilet and took some pictures of the really cute dogs that were walking in and out of the cafe. They were selling the Mar tea holders which are normally leather with a metal rim and wooden inside, but these ones were made out of cows hoofs, which looked pretty revolting. I spoke to my dad and my friends on whatsapp quickly before setting off. Luke was in Lanzarote at the time so we joked that he was a bit closer now. We carried on winding around the mountain hills, the whole time following the old route. Our tour guide told us about the railway track that pretty much followed the route we were on but on the other side of the valley. It brought a lot of tourism to the area and a lot of small settlements set up by each train station. But in the early 1900's it was disused because of a number of landslides and the settlements became ghost towns which we could see whilst driving through the mountains. The majority of this route we followed the Mendoza river which cut into the valley the whole time. At some points it had made an enormous cliff up to 140 meters high at points but the cliff was only on one side I believe this was because of the winds and erosion. The route we were on was rebuilt because the side with the old train track was much more prone to erosion and was constantly in need of maintenance, but it seems a shame not to restore when most of the tunnels and bridges used all that time ago are still standing strong. We stopped at a point where they had built a dam on the Mendoza river forming an enormous reservoir that stretched right across the valley it was an amazing spot for photos and we took plenty asking the Brazilian girl to take a few for us. The tour guide expressed the importance of this water source as they are in a desert and the landscape is so arid they need this as one of their only sources of water. We pressed on with the journey climbing higher. We initially drove past the inca bridge that I really wanted to see with the promise that we would return after visiting the highest mountain in America - Aconcagua 6962 meters high. We arrived at the national park (Parque provincial Aconcagua) and quickly stopped at the building at the base of the climb to pop to the toilet. We began the climb and literally I was immediately out of breathe. The air was so thin here as we were already 3000+ meters above sea level. The views from here were amazing and we visited two lagoons which was odd to see standing water so bloody high up. One called laguna espejo and the larger one which was called laguna de horcones. I was amazed at this place and we took so many photos. When we finally got to the highest viewpoint available in the park we were all relatively disappointed to see that the actually peak was covered by cloud but I guess that high up its quite common. We could see the part of the mountain, just not the tip. The tour guide who definitely didn't love her job, and said she gets tired of the walk every day, told us about a human sacrifice found by two climbers where the indigenous people sacrificed a 7 year old boy to their gods his hair was still there at the spot all those years later. We made our way back down whilst talking to a couple from Scotland. One was a decorator and the other a dog walker and they had been travelling for over a year coming from Africa last. They said they were doing USA next but lived off peanut butter sandwiches to last till now. We also spoke to a Swiss girl who was training to be a primary school teacher with her partner and they were both travelling beforehand. They took a few photos of me and nicki together and then we all got back on the bus out of breathe. One thing worth mentioning was how bloody cold it was this high up. A week beforehand it was completely covered in snow and snow still remained in patches whilst we were there. We drove to a massive archway heading towards the Chilean border. In fact this must of been one of the last buildings before the border control. It was freezing but this was actually a restaurant. Some 3500 meters above sea level. For 130 peso you could eat as much as you want and the food looked so so good but we didn't have enough money. Once the tour guide found this out she lent us 100 peso, I presume she got commission from this remote restaurant anyway and I'm pretty sure they cooked this all especially for us. The food was amazing. Like beef in a stew, with chicken drum sticks, breaded chicken, mash, loads of salad and veg. It was a lot of fun to go up for thirds and really catch them out eating the last of everything they had, I swear on the last chicken bit he splashed me with the oil on purpose but ill let him off. From here, and with an immensely full belly, we headed to the inca bridge. There was a market set up around it that sold things created by the wonderful bridge. When I say this I'm referring to the sulphur. Basically sulphur appears at lots of places in these mountains, for instance on route here there is an outcrop of sulphur that is shaped like a dog on the way to chile and on the way back it looks like a tiger. But at this location the sulphur has covered an entirely natural bridge that has turned it a golden colour. It looks magic and its been used as a crossing point across the valley for many years right back to the ancient inca civilisation. A hotel used to be located here but many people died from an avalanche and all that is left is a small church and the hotel ruins. There are baths here from the hot springs but not this us a protected area and the buildings built for the springs aren't used due to damage being caused by tourists. The tour guide told us the springs were not as hot as they used to be as well. The river running under the ridge looks amazing. But anyway local people are still allowed to enter and place objects there and they leave them there for months until they are totally coated in sulphur making ornaments out of anything even shoes! A boxer dog walked past and someone had drawn a smiley face on his arse, in fact the market nearby was again covered in wild dogs sleeping in boxes and baskets used by the market people you could tell they were indigenous people and maybe they looked after the dogs as there was nothing else out in this wilderness for them. The Scottish decorator pointed out whilst on the bus back the tip of the tallest mountain in America as the clouds had cleared by now. It was a shame the tour guide didn't do the bridge first but oh we'll at least we saw it afterwards. Once we had taken all our photos we got back on the colourful tour bus and made our journey back home, it was a long way so we stopped again at that little cabin with wifi but the rest of the journey we slept. Once home we were shattered after hiking around all day, so we grabbed a few beers making sure the bar man gave us one for cheap as I remembered he owed us some money from yesterday after he had to short change me. There was a massive BBQ on and lots of people in the hostel but we were still so full from our all you can eat buffet. I noticed that Jacob was on the same bus as us from buenos aires and I mentioned the hostel we might stay in whilst in Santiago. It was the same as Robbie and Serenas hostel so would be nice if we could all meet up there. We got tired pretty quick but we had enough beers to be tipsy and made our way back to our room which was all to ourself as nic and lee had left that morning. Truly amazing day today. I love these mountains and am glad that they follow us all the way up north on our journey. Now to sleep, ready for the journey to Chile tomorrow. Santiago next.
- Josh -
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