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Published: March 7th 2009
After our trip to Misiones, we headed southwest for the provinces of Cordoba and then Mendoza.
The bus ride to Cordoba was our longest yet, 22 hours. We arrived into the city of Cordoba on Sunday at about 2, where our friends we met in Punta del Este, Uruguay who are from Cordoba (Leo and Augstin) kindly met us at the bus terminal to pick us up, took us to a hostel to drop our bags off, and then to Leo´s house to catch up and meet some of their friends. That night, we met Leo´s family, had an asado for dinner (steak on the grill and salad), and drank a lot of mate... couldn´t get more Argentine than that I don´t think. I´m not a big meat eater, but Argentina is known for its steak and that was probably the best I have had here yet.
On Monday, Leo, Agustin, and a friend of their´s named Sebastian took us about an hour outside the city to a very rural spot in the middle of the mountains about 15 minutes outside of the town, Carlos Paz. We parked the car on the side of a dirt road and embarked
on a short hike over one of the mountains to reach El Rio San Antonio. From the top of the mountain we had great views of the river and the mountains surrounding it... as you can see in some of my pictures. At the river there are some wild cows, "la playa de los hippies" named after the many hippies that make somewhat permanent camp there during the summer, and a 35 foot cliff to jump off of, so we had a lot of fun hanging out there. We spent a few hours at the river, so by the time we were hiking back, the sun was setting and we were able to see some really good night views of the mountains.
On Tuesday morning, Bo, Amos, and I woke up early and took a bus out to La Cumbre, a small rural town in the middle of the mountain range called "Las Sierras Chicas" (the two main mountain ranges in the Cordoba province are "Las Sierras Cordobas" and "Las Sierras Chicas"- chicas referring to the fact that they are smaller... sizes here are grande and chica... kind of funny) about 2 and a half hours outside of Cordoba.
We arrived during siesta so EVERYTHING was closed, and it was storming out making the city look very barren and gloomy... we made our way to El Condor Hostel, about a 10 minute walk from the center of town. We arrived at the front of a brown, picked fence with a sign on it that read, "El Condor Hostel," but it didn´t quite look like your typical hostel... it was a veryyy old English style house with a garden in the front and old antique items scattered all over (both inside and outside)- iron wheelbarrows, bicycles, pots, wood armoirs, tea sets and anything else you can think of. So we hesitantly opened the gate unsure of whether we were at the right place or not, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell. An older woman, probably about 60-70 years old came to the door and welcomed us in to her home- very pretty... the same old English style decoration on the inside with antique everythings thrown all over the place (jars of all types of jams lining the kitchen shelves, never ending tea sets... a dusty old bicycle in the middle of their living room?... etc.). So
then, she led us up the stairs where there were three rooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms was just storage of all the random things she kept in her house, and the other two had beds for guests. Ours had four beds and of course some decorative antiques giving it a very homey feel... nice change from all the other hostels we had been staying at. However, I can´t say I felt that way at first, because as you walk up the stairs to our room there were all these creepy, really old and dusty, black and white photographs of people, and on top of that the setting of the house, the barren town, and the thunderstorm caused every flashback from any scary movie i´ve ever seen (if you have ever seen the Skeleton Key and maybe Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that really describes the scene) to surface in my head. Eventually the sun came out though and the town started to wake up a bit and it felt a little more lively.
Bo and I took a 30 minute walk up a dirt road and eventually landed ourselves at a little estancia (ranch) with some really friendly
Rio de San Antonio
stopped to take some pictures on our night time hike back from swimminggauchos so we decided to go on a trail ride that was going out in 15 minutes. We ended up going out with a really nice family from Rosario (3rd largest city and located on the eastern side of Argentina) and one of the gauchos who worked at the ranch took us out with his FOUR YEAR OLD daughter in the lead. It was one of the cuter things i´ve ever seen- this tiny little girl on a huge horse; her feet didn´t even reach below the saddle so she couldn´t use her heels to make the horse go. Instead, she would pull sticks off the trees as whips instead. She had no fear at all and led the entire time, setting the pace, most of the time at a gallop. Anyways, the trail was really pretty- we rode up a path and at the very top was a huge Austrian style mansion said to have been the home of an S.S. Nazi, now belonging to his 2 sons who rent it out as a hotel. (A lot of the nazis moved to Argentina after World War II). For the rest of the trail, we rode up and all through
Rio de San Antonio
hiking back to the cars at night the mountains which made for some really nice views of Las Sierras Chicas. That night, we felt really at home in the woman´s house (she also lives with another older man and woman who I think are relatives) as the only guests staying there and had the best night´s sleep I think I have had yet in Argentina.
The next morning we rented bikes and headed out on about a 2 hour bike ride first through a lot of flat farm land where at one point we had to bike through a herd of loose cows and saw the occasional loose horses. Eventually, the ride turned into a climb up one of the mountains until we eventually made it to our destination point at the top, a flat area on the peak of the mountain called "Cuchi Corral," a well known area for paragliders where the national championships were held a few years ago. It´s crazy watching people just strap on a parachute, wait a while until the wind is JUST right, and then literally running off the cliff and jumping out into the air. Anyways, Bo was REALLY game to go while Amos and I were considering it
La Cumbre
biking to Cuchi Corral (paragliding)... first part was hilly through flat lands then it was a climb up the mountain (my biggest fear is flying and his is heights... so it took us some thinking time but eventually we decided we would). Bo went first. As beginners, you fly tandem with one of the pros. Bo had a smooth take off, but the wind was really turbulant when he got up there so his parachute was doing these tornado like spins in the sky and he ended up going way higher than anyone else out there flying... I thought he was well over 3,000 feet in the air... far above the clouds. He was up there for about 20 minutes and then made a really smooth landing into a little field at the base of the mountain. At that point, when they drove back up to the peak, the wind had totally changed making it too dangerous to fly, so Amos and I were saved from conquering our worst fears... for now. We biked back to La Cumbre and then caught a bus back to Cordoba.
We arrived in Cordoba in the early evening, met back up with Agustin, Leo, and Leo´s older brother, Guillermo, and went back to our favorite spot at El Rio San Antonio to camp.
Cordoba
asado at Leos house- mate in hand while cooking on the parilla- fun fact... after the person cooking the asado finishes, you always clap for them after. asados are a pretty serious thing here... We stopped at a Walmart (yes, there are Walmarts in Argentina) to buy food for dinner, so we didn´t end up arriving there until about 2:30 a.m. (Argentines really do not move at the same pace we do in the United States). We had to hike over the mountain with all our bags and food supplies to get to the river in the pitch dark with only 3 head lamps- it was pretty successful with the exception being Bo taking a spill on a set of rocks with bags of food in hand- but he was fine. The view of the stars and the mountains at the top of the peak was incredible. The stars were so bright, and we were able to see the southern cross really clearly, a constellation that you can only see from the southern hemisphere of the world!
We finally arrived at the river. We looked for a place to make camp, but the side of the river we were on was full of other campsites and lots of people, and in South America you have to be really careful with your belongings because stealing is a big issue... so we decided to cross
Cordoba
At Leo´s house with his younger brother, Martin the river with ALL our things (tents, backpacks, food, supplies, etc.) to make camp on the other side where there were no people... that was quite an adventure- we had to make a few trips with all our things to bring them across the river - luckily the water only came up just above our waists so we could walk across without getting everything soaked. So by 3:30, we arrived at our campsite, set up our tents, made a fire, made some dinner, and went to bed. We only slept for a few hours because we woke up early to the sun, noise from the others waking up on the other side of the river, and cows mooing... that was interesting. We made breakfast, then spent the rest of the day at the river swimming and jumping off a 35 foot cliff into the water. Later that evening we headed back to the city of Cordoba to catch an overnight bus to Mendoza.
We arrived in Mendoza at 7 a.m. the next morning and went to found a hostel. Once we settled in and took a nap, we took an hour bus ride out to Maipu, where all the
vineyards are. We rented bikes and embarked on a self-guided bike tour through all the "bodegas." All the farms are family run, and the majority are pretty old. We only had enought time to see 3 farms before we had to return the bikes, so we started with a chocolate and liquor farm that produced all kinds of chocolates, liquors, and salsas. The next farm we went to was a newer vineyard, which was really nice but rather than teaching you about their vineyard, they really just tried to sell you their wine... and it was not what I imagined a beautiful Mendoza vineyard to look like. The third farm we went to though was the oldest vineyard in Maipu, which did live up to my expectations. It was a beautiful old farm house with old iron wheelbarrows laying around, old oak barrels as decoration, vines along the roof of the porch, and vineyards extending far into the distance. First, we did a wine tasting, and then we went on a tour. We saw the different types of grapes they grow, learned how to distinguish them by their leaves, then went inside to see the cellars where they age the
wine in bottles, and then downstairs to where they let the wine age in big oak barrels, which they only use twice- the first time, for a year and the second time for only 6 months, producing 2 different wines.
The next day in Mendoza we did some sightseeing around the city in the morning. For the afternoon, we went out to Portrerillos to go rafting on El Rio Mendoza. It was a lot of fun, and the water was a really pretty clear blue but also FREEZING because it is Andes melt-off water.
For our last full day in Mendoza, we caught a 7 a.m. bus out to Puente del Inca, a tiny mountain town in the middle of the Andes off of the main road that runs between Argentina and Chile. It took about 3 and a half hours to get there- we had to take one bus from Mendoza to Uspallata, a town at the base of the Andes, and then switch busses to get to Puente del Inca. Our second bus was an hour and a half of spiraling up the Andes, which made for some awesome views of the mountains and occasional mountain
lakes. Because it´s summer here, the mountains are not all covered in snow and there is a lot of green vegetation and pretty yellow flowers... but the higher peaks are still snow capped. The mountain lakes are really pretty too- they are a very streaky green and blue like you are looking at an oil painting. Anyways, we arrived at Puente del Inca which is pretty much a base for people who want to visit the Parque Nacional de Aconcagua or who are about to summit it the peak. Aconcagua is the highest peak in the Americas, and second highest in the world to the mountains of the Himalayas. It takes climbers about 2 weeks to summit it because of aclimitization time due to the altitude. The base near Puente del Inca is already at about 3,000 meters above sea level.
So, we started at Puente del Inca (by the way, the Incas used to live there...), which just has a few little places to eat, some outdoor vendors, a pretty bridge made out of a rock formation (called "El Puente del Inca," which is where the town gets its name from), an Aconcagua museum that gives the history
Rio de San Antonio, Cordoba
one of the higher parts of the hike over to the river... you have to hike over a mountain because it is in the middle of the Sierras Chicas of the mountain and its first climbers, and the remains of train tracks that used to run between Argentina and Chile in the late 1800s/early 1900s. We walked an hour up the main road from Puente del Inca to get to the bottom of the Aconcagua National Park, checked in with the park ranger, and then started hiking towards Confluencia, a 4 hour hike to one of the first camps. It was all up hill, and because of the altitude it was pretty strenuous. The scenery was so pretty- we were surrounding by the Andes mountains in every direction, with snow-capped, glacier-covered Aconcagua in front of us in the distance (rangers won´t let climbers enter the park to climb to the summit of aconcagua unless they present all their equipment first... ice picks, etc.). Well, we didn´t make it all the way up to Confluencia because of time, but we spent about 3 hours hiking in the direction of Confluencia. We passed a lot of other trekkers and people on donkeys.
We made it back to the base, checked out with the park ranger, walked an hour back to Puente del Inca, and JUST missed our bus back to
Mendoza... so we had to amuse ourselves for 3 hours until the next bus came, arrived back at the hostel at around midnight, went to bed, and then woke up early the next morning to catch a bus bound for Santiago, Chile. We spent about 4 hours winding up the Andes on a double level bus, spent about 3 hours in customs crossing the border in the middle of the Andes, then about 2 hours winding down the Andes on the double decker bus on a road with no guard rails; I thought I would have been a little bit scared, but I was too mesmerized by the views of the Andes mountains. Anyways, we finally arrived in Santiago, Chile that evening.
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