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Published: March 14th 2009
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Mendoza
Almost every street was lined with trees like this. We arrived in
Mendoza,
Argentina by bus at about 9pm and grabbed a taxi to our hostel. After checking in we left to check out the city and get some dinner. We found a strip of restaurants near the central plaza and had some great local wine (
Malbec, the region´s specialty wine) and a nice meal trying our first Argentinian steak! The restaurant had an inviting atmosphere, there were a lot of people out dining which seemed normal at first until we realized it was midnight and we were still eating. This is pretty much the norm in Argentina but hard for us to get used to. There were kids there too, including a really cute four year old at the table next to us. He was pretty restless and kept wandering around. We tried to talk to him with our broken Spanish but he mostly just stared and smiled shyly. We couldn´t help but laugh when he started walking around with a big slab of beef and then leaning against the cars that lined the patio...next time we looked over he was wiping his steak along the length of the car and then taking a bite - that´s some dirty
steak!! yum!!
At the hostel we were staying in a dorm room with 4 other people...wow, we didn´t know 4 people could have so much stuff and spread it around like these 4 did! When we first saw the room we asked the hostel employee if they´d been there a long time, he said - no they just arrived yesterday! We didn´t have the best sleep that night as they ended up coming in pretty drunk and loud. We decided to switch rooms to our own room the next day...we still love the hostel experience but dorm rooms are always hit and miss!!! At one point in the night we woke up to some of the loudest thunder we had heard, which was a little disorienting as we were in a desert-type climate and were pretty sure it didn´t usually rain. Luckily it was beautiful the next day.
We had to get ourselves a bit organized for the next leg of our trip, so we spent some time doing that from the hostel. It was Sunday and we didn´t realize that pretty much everything shuts down for Domingo - the day of rest. Luckily the town was nice
Mendoza - Wine Tour
The biggest spread of food we've ever seen and this was just the first course! for walking around and relaxing. We enjoyed having some downtime after being on the go since we arrived.
Mendoza is really beautiful. Every street in the city centre is lined with huge trees that meet over the middle. We found a pedestrian street in the middle of town with some sidewalk cafes that were open. We had a great lunch there and did some people-watching. While watching we noticed our friend Armando from the bus (kind of hard to miss). This time he was wearing his blue silk pajama bottoms with no jeans over top, a plaid sleeveless top and of course the wig!
Seeing as everything was closed we joined the local Medocinos in having a siesta! We headed out for dinner at about 8:30pm which is quite early for the locals! We were the only ones in the restaurant for a little while. We stopped by the casino at the Park Hyatt to try a few hands of black jack...things were going well for a while, but after they raised the table limit it was a total disaster! At least we had some fun!!
We noticed there was a night market at the central plaza
Mendoza - Dinner at La Fiorencia
This boy was so cute...he was gnawing away at his steak and wiping it along the car! and took a walk through. There were street performers - musicians and magicians and local aritisans. After strolling around for an hour or so we headed home.
The one thing we really wanted to do in Mendoza was tour the wineries, so we arranged a tour through our hostel for Monday. We visited 3 wineries and then went for lunch after. The wine tours were good, we got to see a traditional winery, a medium-sized winery and a family-run winery. All included a tasting at the end. The last stop was lunch and we really had no idea what we were in for. The spread of food we saw on the table was quite possibly the biggest spead of food we´ve ever seen and everything looked so delicious! We think there were about 80 dishes of food on the table! There were local cheeses, meats, olives, beans, vegetables, rice, bread, mustards - everything! Then they told us this was the first course!?!? We thought they were joking until they kept bringing out more and more food! They brought 2 types of empanadas, a rice and chorizo (sausage) dish and a pasta dish. Lastly, the presented us with local ice
Mendoza - Dinner at La Fiorencia
A great first dinner in Mendoza. cream covered in dulce de leche sauce (a favourite caramel sauce that they put on just about everything). Of course the wine kept flowing through the whole lunch too! We really enjoyed the tour and met a lot of great people and had great conversations - a couple from Australia, Germany and Canada and a guy from Buenos Aires.
That night we were booked on a night bus from Mendoza - Bariloche. We were happy to see our seats were like lazy-boy chairs that reclined almost flat and had a foot rest too. We were served a hot meal for dinner, and breakfast in the morning. They also showed english movies which helped pass some time. The journey is about 1200km and took about 16 hours. We left at 8:45pm that night and arrived about 1pm in Bariloche. We kept the ¨Fresh Face Towelletes¨ from our plane and those things were great to have when we woke up feeling dirty after sitting/sleeping in the lazy-boy for 16 hours straight! We actually got a decent sleep, which was nice and we woke to a view that was nothing short of spectacular. It started with rugged dryland landscape (similar to what
you might see in the Nevada desert) and then became more grand with glacial escapments and mountainous lakes that were so clear you could see straight to the bottom. What a beautiful drive.
Bariloche is an interesting town - very touristy but a stunning backdrop more than makes up for it. We grabbed a taxi into town and when we were getting our bags out of the trunk the car started to roll backwards! The driver shouted "AYA" and jumped in the driver´s seat, but we had to prevent the car from rolling down the hill until he did. It was pretty funny.
We arrived and took a much-needed shower before exploring. We had to arrange our transportation crossing back over the Andes this time on boats (across several lakes) and buses. The town is on the shore of a glacial lake that is surrounded on all other sides by mountains. It is popular with both international and domestic tourists as a summer holiday destination. Bariloche is also famous for chocolate, and we sampled several stores' offerings. Delicious!
The next morning was our bus/boat transport from Bariloche, across the Andes, and back into Chile. We were on
Bariloche - Petrohue
The colour of the water in this glacial lake at Puerto Frias was awesome. the bus at 6:50 am but didn´t end up leaving Bariloche until 8:15 as the bus drove around willy-nilly picking up a passenger on the northeast side of town, then picking up someone on the southwest side of town before picking up a third on the northeast again. We ended up driving by our hostel 3 times before we finally left the city?! However, after leaving the city the tour was very well organized.
After a 30 minute bus ride we arrived at Pto. Pañuelo where we boarded a boat for a one hour ride across a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. We couldn´t stop taking photos! We arrived in Puerto Blest and boarded a bus bound for Puerto Alegre. When we arrived we boarded another boat for 20 minutes across a glacial lake. The water colour was awesome. We arrived at Puerto Frias where we boarded a bus - a 2 hours ride to the town of Peulla. We stopped in Peulla for lunch and boarded another boat bound for Petrohue. The tour continued all the way to Puerto Montt, but we needed to depart at this leg.
When we arrived at Petrohue, a man was waiting
with a sign that read "Michelle and Travis Hall". We thought "ah, close enough!" and introduced ourselves. We had arranged for him to pick us up from Petrohue and drive us to the small town of Cochamo, where we have arranged a horse trek up into the Andes. We are really looking forward to the horse trek and aren't really sure what to expect.
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Michelle & Travis
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