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Road of the year
This road has 365 curves in it, hence the name.. It took us about 3 hours to drive just over 100 km in our Suzuki Fun, pretty slow going. Mendoza was a really cool place.... therw was nice big parks, central plazas where people would try ´hang out´and great location for the Andes. The people we met there too were all really great!
After a long drive through the night, we arrived at Mendoza at about 7am in the morning to be greeted by loads of people trying to persuade us to go to their hostel. We ignored them all and set off to a place we had read about in the LP (Lonely Planet for non-travellers 😉)
Anyway again the guide book failed us, as the hostel we choose was kind of dirty and grotty (or maybe it was just our room), but we only found out after we had booked one night because we were so tired from the journey. Later in the day we went to hunt for better hostels and ended up staying in one which we had been offered at the bus station and they would have paid our taxi fair (we had walked, doh!), later we went to the big park, San Martin with it´s regatta lake and football stadium from the ´78 world cup. We took a much needed siesta in
The high Andes
This may or may not be Cerro Aconcagua, at 6.960 m asl the highest outside the Himalayas the sun.
The new hostel we stayed in had some interesing characters.... There was a guy from South Africa, Shuan, who we later found out was really called Francis, who walked around with his shades and walkman on most of the time. Then there was Alex the mad Scottish bloke, who always had a beer in his hand, even at 11.30am! Then two Irish guys and a girl from Denmark. We also met two guys from England, Joe and Stuart who had rented a car and were going to drive into the Alta Montañas the next day, so we decided to go along too.
We drove up the road of the year, but it was pretty crapper weather and really cloudy so the views weren´t great. Mendoza is supposed to get 280-300 days of sunshine a year and the day we go into the mounains it cloudy! Later we drove through the cloud and out the another side wher we could see some blue sky and sun! Immediately the mood of the car lifted and teh brit pop tunes playing on the radio seemed so much better. The rest of the day was pretty nice.
We also
Taking in the view
Having a rest, with Stuart and Joe, after successfully completing the road of the year. We only saw two other vehicles on it. visted a Bodega while in Mendoza, after all it is the captial of wines in Argentina. We when with an American guy, Wes from our hostel and got on a tour where we met some guys from New Zealand and Japan. We managed to get the (very pretty) girls to give us a good sample of wine, before we all decided to club together and buy the wine on promotion. But we had to buy 6 bottles and there was only 5 of us! So we decided that we would have to drink one while we were there. We were pretty merry by this point anyway! Although by now the Japanise guy decided that he didn´t want a bottle so now we needed to drink two! We asked the girls for a bottle opener and then asked them to join us too, but unfortunatley they said they had to go for lunch. Thought on there way out Sol, who incidently wanted to trade the most expensive bottle of wine for Matts jacket, gave us a free bottle that had been opened but not drunk! We all sat around and polished off 3 wines of wine between the 4 of us
Puente Del Inca
A natural stone bridge (with a old hotel under it!) that has turned yellow with sulphur from the hot spring water running underneath it. with no lunch. We were there so long taht the girls came back from lunch and started to give another tour... The afternoon was spent sleeping.
That night we went round to the other HI hostel for an Asado (BBQ), our first and coincidently last in Argentina. The food was really good and we meet loads of cool people. Alex was wearing his pancho and hat and looked like a Peruvian porter. Later we carried on partying at a club with some girls, Laura from Costa Rica and a crazy candanian girl Heather that we met. It was a really good night!
Well I´m now in Santiago, Chile, my third country of the trip, though I thought I might not get here. The day before the border was closed because of snow, it had cleared enough though and we were allowed through. Santiago seems quite nice but it´s very smoggy!
Til the next blog... bye guys and don´t all work too hard 😉
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Dave Levick
non-member comment
Hostel recommendations
Hi Gary, Sounds like you are having a really good time. Can you mention the names of good hostels you stay in - we'll be out there in late September so it would be good if we had recommendations. Keep up the hard work! Thanks, Dave.