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Published: August 28th 2007
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The other thing that you couldn´t miss in Mendoza is that is has a huge ski culture. The main street is lined with shops selling and hiring ski and snowboarding gear, and at night the restaurants were full of people fresh from the slopes with their big red faces and goggle marks. We decided to give it a try, and even though there are a few resorts close to the city, the best and one we fancied, Las Lenas, is about 6 hours away, near a town called Malargue.
So after 4 nights in Mendoza, we headed to Malargue, and straight to a local travel agent. Although the food had been fab in Mendoza, we really miss home cooking and fancied somewhere self catering, so the agent sorted us out with a cabana, and took our ski reservations.
Well, the cabana was gorgeous: cozy, secluded, with a really friendly landlady, and so much better than we could have ever imagined for the price we were paying. It snowed while we were here, and it really was picture perfect; the kind of crisp, deep snow we´ve probably never had at home, and at times we had to remind ourselves it
wasn´t Christmas, and couldn´t seem to stop singing Walking In A Winter Wonderland every time we went out. So, the cabana was just perfect to come back to at night to cook a lovely meal and get stuck into all that wine we had carted from Mendoza!
And as for the the skiing! It all started off well, we hired an instructor in the morning, a girl called Theodora, who claimed to be really impressed by us and said we were doing much better than other beginners. In fact, she even asked Neil if he water-skied (yeah, right!), as she thought he must have some kind of relevant experience if he´d never actually skied before. It was all really great fun, and with our confidence boosted, we went for a quick lunch before heading up the slopes on our own.
We´d been skiing round the base of the resort with Theodora, but she´d pointed out a slope that she said wasn´t any more difficult than the base, just longer, and so we went for it. Now, the thought of getting on a ski-lift is the main reason I always said I would never go skiing, but this trip
is all about new experiences, so I just had to put that thought aside. Theodora had also given us a quick tutorial on how to get on and off the lift: ski forward when the light goes green, and plant yourself on the seat as soon as it comes round. We managed that bit ok, and swinging along high above the slopes was actually really enjoyable. Now we just had to get off - stand up as soon as both skis hit the snow and ski away. Stand up and ski away, stand up and ski away...Neil can´t remember is he stood up and then fell over, or if he simply threw himself onto the ground but, either way, he ended up in a heap in the snow. What he does remember as he lay there, however, is hearing my panicked voice shouting "Neil, I´m still on it, Neil, I´m still on it!!!" and looking up to see me heading back down the mountain. What felt like a lifetime later, but was probably only about 30 seconds, the lift was stopped, and a man came to rescue me, but now we had to ski back down.
It became clear
almost immediately that the slope was very definitely steeper than the base and that we were surrounded by expert skiers, even the 4 year olds - we probably shouldn´t have picked South America´s most prestigious resort for our first time! But although the slope was much faster than he expected and he fell a few times, Neil got right into the swing of it. Unfortunately I wasn´t always quite so successful and took off flying down the slopes a couple of times, unable to stop myself, and I mean, really flying. The first time it happened, Neil said he couldn´t believe the person speed skiing past him, using their poles to push themselves faster (I was, actually desperately trying to slow myself down) was me and was really impressed until he worked out that I was, in fact, just totally out of control. It was like something out of Some Mothers Do ´Ave ´Em, and I only managed to stop by crashing into a snowboarder. The second time it happened was near the bottom of a slope and Neil literally had to throw himself in front of me to stop me or I would have gone flying into the resort
itself, through shops or crowds of people or something. I´m amazed i didn´t break a bone on one of us, and so was the medic who came skiing over to our aid!
We didn´t escape completely uninjured though - Neil refused to wear his goggles (he claims he couldn´t see through them; I´m sure it was vanity) and ended up with badly sunburned eyelids and - wait for it - eyeballs! No, we didn´t know it was possible to burn your eyeballs either!
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