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Published: January 28th 2007
blog by Dave Mendoza
After figuring out a rough schedule for the remainder of our rapidly diminishing time, we established that our first port of call in
Argentina would be
Mendoza, which is
Argentina's 4th largest city with 22 million inhabitants. This is a city that sits in the shadow of
Aconcagua, the highest peak of the Andes range at 6960m, but yet the dry climate provides the ideal conditions for wine production all year round. In fact,
Mendoza province produces 70%!o(MISSING)f the country's entire wine supply. There is an intricate irrigation system dating back to Inca times that funnels snow-melt from the Andean mountain range into the city, which enriches the production capabilities of the vineyards in what would otherwise be a very hot and barren desert land.
As we arrived by bus from
Valparaiso in
Chile we had to endure the border crossing formalities. Well, they should have been formalities. Because of a problem with a previous bus load of tourists, we were delayed at the border for over four hours. Bus after bus piled in front and behind us in an ever growing queue that never seemed to move. We all piled off the
buses and stood at the border chatting and sitting around as each bus driver tried to find out what was going on. The explanation was never quite as clear as we would have liked, as is always the case with these things, but after sitting patiently and trying not to fume we were eventually pulling into the
Mendoza bus station by early evening.
The journey had actually been rather an experience in itself but for a change this was down something positive. Because we had to cross the
Andes range through a mountain pass to get from
Chile to
Argentina we had driven through simply fantastic scenery. Layers of rocks in every imaginable shade from white to yellow to red to blue were revealed around each corner. Rushing streams followed our course and signs of mountain rock slides and winter snow avalanches scarred the landscape. We passed a winter ski resort, dry and barren because it was the height of summer. An old disused train track followed the valley and mountain passes at times disappearing into tunnels in the mountains. The bus ride was thoroughly enjoyable and not remotely dangerous or uncomfortable - until we hit the border and
the huge line up of buses.
Once we had arrived at our destination I have to say that we were impressed.
Mendoza is potentially one of the prettiest cities we have had the pleasure to stay in. Every street was lined with enormous trees and in most cases was as clean as a whistle. The trees are not natural to this region. By this I mean that without the amazing network of irrigation channels that run down every street in the city the trees would not survive and this town would be in the middle of an arid desert. All these shady avenues were arranged in a grid pattern around five plazas. These were located on the map in the same way you would find a five points on a dice with the main square,
Plaza Independencia being the central spot. The presence of the trees turn what would otherwise be a dry baking city into a lovely shaded oasis which is a pleasure to leisurely spend a few days in.
We spent a while finding an appropriate hotel here because most of them were either way beyond our budget or were full for the weekend. Summer in
Mendoza is the height of tourist season and the height of prices. Eventually we settled for a well located little place in the centre of the city and walking distance from the five main squares that would serve very nicely as our base here.
Once we'd settled in, we chose to explore some of the city by foot.
Plaza Independencia is a leafy area of green space littered with benches that radiate out from a large modern fountain. All sorts of people would come here to enjoy a stroll or a sit down in the fresh air. Arts and crafts stalls would start to set up with their wares in the afternoon and by night the square was literally heaving with people who had come to enjoy some live evening entertainment, wander the craft stalls or sit on the benches and people watch. We enjoyed relaxing in one of the cafes that punctuated the streets next to the main square, watching the city's life pass by as we sipped our drinks.
While we were here we had to book some bus tickets for our journey to
Buenos Aires and we decided to make the journey to the other
side of town on foot. Despite
Mendoza being a city there was a lovely calm atmosphere about the place and walking through the town to the bus station was a perfect way to explore and enjoy the sights along the way that you wouldn't otherwise see by taxi. We made a circular route, walking down shaded avenues and through small squares and coming back the centre of the town where we collapsed under at a tree shaded cafe in the city centre by the main
Plaza Independencia for some cold drinks to escape the heat.
This commercial part of town full of cafes with outside seating areas and large umbrellas has been pedestrianised and so it makes a lovely place to stop for a bite to eat and a drink, which is exactly what we did several times over. Another bonus here, certainly as far as Bronia was concerned, was the abundance of modern boutiques and designer stores which we took the time to browse through.
One afternoon we did what you have to do if you come to this part of
Argentina. We booked a trip to sample some of the delights of the vineyards which abound
in the nearby countryside. The first vineyard we turned up to was a huge commercial venture called
Nortons, which supplies several export markets
(Holland, France, UK) as well as a significant measure of the domestic wine sector. This very professional set up of thousands of hectares and immense outbuildings all temperature regulated by computer provided us with an immensely interesting tour of the production and storage areas, looking at the combination of old and new world techniques followed by a sampling session. In addition to sampling the good table wines they sell to the masses we got to taste a couple of rather expensive wines by our usual standards which was a pleasantly decadent experience.
Our second vineyard visit was at the completely opposite end of the wine production scale. It was an organic vineyard called
Cecchin, which was family owned and which did not even have much of its own machinery. At
Cecchin every aspect of the vine growing process is left to natural processes, including pest control and irrigation. They plant natural plants to attract the insects and pests away from the vines. They dig ditches to hold water for slow absorption into the soil instead of
the modern process that many vineyards use of a black hose dripping a supply of regulated water when the computer gauges the soil to be too dry. All the grapes at
Cecchin are picked and transported to the bodega (wine house) by hand. Perhaps surprisingly, we found the results to be excellent when it came to tasting time again, and we could not really tell the difference between the two producers. We didn't consider that it might be down to our distinctly amateur wine tasting palettes.
Our final stop on the tour led us to a very different local product -
olives. The fact that there are an increasing number of olive groves and oil producers should give you some idea of the type of climate that exists here. We drove to a large farm on which they produce six types of olive, five for the oil and one for the actual fruit to eat. Now for the facts. It takes approximately 9kg of olives in order to manufacture one bottle of olive oil, and a tree can yield 100kg per season, or year.
As you can work out for yourselves it requires a lot of trees to
make the production of the oil worthwhile, which in turn requires a lot of land. We had a tour of the factory to learn how they used to make the oil with old presses (see pic) which was a very long and labour intensive process of applying olive paste to hundreds of plates and then squeezing them down in a vice to get drops of olive oil. We then saw the modern machinery which almost removes the need for people in the process. Again we were permitted to taste some of the merchandise at the end of the tour, which was just what the doctor ordered after all that wine.
Our last day in the town was a Sunday and this basically meant that nothing of any note was open all day. Some of the cafes were serving snacks so we were able to enjoy a long lazy lunch in the centre of town. That aside we simply filled our day with strolls through the leafy streets, restful pauses in the main square and by enjoying the occasional ice cream in the sunshine.
In the evening we had to make our way to the bus station for our
final bus journey of the whole world trip. We were going to endure a 14 hour slog to
Buenos Aires. It wouldn't be as much of a hardship though because buses in Argentina are all pretty good and we had shelled out a pretty penny insuring the most luxurious level of bus travel as a way of celebrating our last bus journey.
Buenos Aires
Despite 14hrs on the road, our overnight bus proved to be very comfortable and our extra investment had paid off handsomely. Our fake leather seats which were enormous and laid back almost flat were located in the bottom section of a double-decker, whereas on the top level there were about 40 seats, downstairs there were only 10. That tells you how much space we had. We were served dinner, followed by a movie and the whole experience left us was miles from what we had been enduring on most of our previous bus journeys.
After an interestingly expensive taxi ride to our pre-booked hotel (he ripped us off), we arrived at a doorway. As we struggled inside to the shabby lobby and the taxi sped off we were wondering if it would be the
Concrete tiled pools that used to hold the wine for fermentation.
Now they just use them for storage before bottling. That's a whole lot of Norton wine for consumption.
Mendoza, Argentina all over again (our first shocking hotel in
Delhi). Our fears heightened as we were shown to a drab room without much decoration located next to a building site. Or rather, the hotel was the building site as it was fitting a new elevator. Fortunately our travels had toughened us somewhat for these circumstances and one stern phone call later we were off to an alternative room in a quiet wing of the hotel which proved to be quite acceptable.
Having sorted our accommodation out we decided to start exploring the main attractions in this part of the capital, so with guide book in hand we strode out in the stifling summer heat to have a look around. Our route took us first to the shopping heart of the city,
Florida Street.
This pedestrianised strip is approximately a kilometre of prime shopping territory, and meets another touristy street called
Calle Lavalle which extends the shopping zone. Here you can find pretty much anything you would find in your local town centre in the
UK, only much cheaper. We found a huge shopping mall, tucked into the shell of an ornate colonial building with an intricately painted
ceiling, which housed lots of designer clothing stores and a complete food hall serving a great variety of tasty goods at a very cheap rate. This soon became a haunt of ours as much for the air conditioning as for the food and shopping.
After browsing for a few hours we decided to continue our walk into the heart of the
Microcentro, the business and administrative part of the city. This took us past the
Teatro Colon, a huge monolithic building which stands proudly at the centre of cultural
Buenos Aires. Also nearby is the
Obelisko, situated on a traffic island. It is a huge needle of white stone that towers in the sky and was erected to commemorate Argentinean independence. Both of these sites stand on the
Avenida de 9 Julio, which the folk here claim to be the widest road in the world with 16 lanes.
It was a brilliant city to just stroll around and get your bearings, which is exactly how we enjoyed our first day. To get a better idea of the attractions on offer here and to quickly around to the widely dispersed historical sights, we booked ourselves onto a half-day city
tour with a travel agency.
On this city tour, our first port of call was the
Plaza de Mayo. This is a public square which accommodates the comparatively small
Piramida de Mayo, another obelisk dedicated to the independence of
Buenos Aires from the Spanish. It is surrounded by public buildings of late 19th century architecture, including the
Banco de la Nation and several other financial institutions.
One whole side of the Plaza is occupied by the
Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. This famous old building is from where the leaders of the land would have addressed the thronged masses in days gone by. In fact, it is from a balcony here that
Madonna sang in the film
Evita, a movie about the life of Eva Peron, the popular wife of President Juan Peron who took office between 1946 and 1955. Eva Peron (maiden name Duarte) helped rule with her husband and is fondly remembered by the people of the country for extending social justice to the poor. Nowadays the current president does not reside here, although state business is still conducted from this building.
The most architecturally stunning building here though, is the
Catedral Metroplitana. This baroque
old building contains the tomb of
General Jose de San Martin,
Argentina's most famous hero of independence, and he is commemorated with an eternal flame burning on the front of the building.
Moving on from here we drove south to the renovated waterfront area of
Puerto Madero in which the brick warehouses have been converted into trendy restaurants and bars. Still further south we saw the cobbled streets of the previously rich district of
San Telmo, before we stopped to enjoy the working-class delights of the famous
La Boca district.
The first point of interest in
La Boca was the huge football stadium nicknamed
La Bombonera, home of the world famous
Boca Juniors football (soccer) team. The people here are fanatical about their football and everything for miles around is adorned with the blue and yellow of the team with match days taking on a carnival atmosphere.
Also in this neighbourhood there are several streets, the main one being
Caminito, in which are the houses have been decorated in extremely bright and garish colours. Apparently, although the tradition has been carried on for the tourists, the inhabitants here used to splash the left over paint from the
shipyards onto the sides of the buildings to brighten them up.
Buenos Aires is responsible for the birth of the tango, originally created by immigrant workers from
Italy and
Spain. As the working-class hub of the city,
La Boca was the epicentre of the tango movement and today you can see couples dancing for the tourists on every street corner.
Our final ports of call were the upper-class districts of
Recoleta and
Retiro. These boast amongst their attractions the capital's finest art galleries and museums, along with some fantastically luxurious parks and gardens which we were able to drive through and around.
Also here is the
Cementario de la Recoleta which we had heard from other travellers was a must see. We left our tour group here for the day and went out on our own to see the cemetery. As we walked through the entrance gates it was as if we were looking at another city. From the main entrance radiated numerous alleys with row after row of elaborately sculpted crypts that are the final resting place of
Buenos Aires' rich and famous, including Eva Peron by the way.
Each tomb, enormous in size and
ornately decorated, is inscribed with the family name, emblems, crests, and other symbols. You can peer through glass windows and ornate doorways to see altars and shrines in the rooms of each tomb. Coffins stacked on shelves that go deep into the ground can be seen and some tombs must have up to a dozen or more family members inside. Upkeep must be paid on each one by the family or they risk being ejected from their lot. We saw many run down and abandoned vaults whose owners must have defaulted on their payments.
It was a unique experience to be in such a beautiful yet ultimately very sad and disturbing place, and we were glad we hadn't excluded this from our visit. The tour had been a great way of seeing the whole city in our limited timeframe.
In the following couple of days we took the time to explore some of the main areas again, along with some new territory. We chose to have a look at two more districts of the city,
Congresso and
Palermo.
Congresso is very close to where we were staying and is a grittier and more wholesome feeling part of
the city centre. Here there are plenty of old theatres, cheap shops, decrepit cinemas, restaurants crowded with locals and the cheaper end of the accommodation scale.
As the name suggests though, there are also lots of administrative buildings here, including the
Palacio del Congreso, a hugely grand place with its own plaza and monument.
Another place that had been recommended to us was
Palermo, and in particular
Palermo Viejo, the old part of the neighbourhood. To get here we had to take the
Subte, the underground train system that seems to be part and parcel of any major city. This one was clean and efficient as we had found most of the transport in
South America, but the platforms and trains were extremely hot and stuffy. It was quite a relief to reach relatively fresh 35C degree air once more when we had travelled the half dozen stops or so to our destination.
Palermo Viejo can only be described as the yuppy section of town. It is easy to see the money here, as the streets reflect a very upmarket life style and a trendy bar and nightclub scene. The streets are lined with tall leafy trees and
they are punctuated by modern cafes and wine bars, not to mention designer clothing boutiques and expensive household goods. We really enjoyed wandering round in
Buenos Aires' most decadent avenues and seeing for ourselves the obvious economic recovery taking place here (
Argentina suffered a big economic crash some years ago when it tried and failed to keep the peso in line with the US dollar).
One of the places we revisited before we left the city, was the
Plaza de Mayo. This is the central point for any protests that are carried out in the city, and every Thursday since 1977 at 3:30pm there has been a very special event taking place in this square. In late 1976, General Videla seized control of the state and began 'cleansing' the country of suspected leftist anti-government organisations. This meant that something like an estimated 80,000 people were disappeared (
Los Desaparecidos) in what is now know as the 'dirty war'. This period of terror lasted until the
Falklands War in 1983.
In spite of a government ban on organised protests, a group of 14 mothers united in the
Plaza de Mayo demanding information about their missing sons. As
the mother is the focal point of the family unit here in
Argentina, this small gathering was virtually untouchable. These women, along with their female relatives still meet up to this day under the banner of the
Madres de Plaza de Mayo, and are widely credited with beginning the reestablishment of the country’s civil society.
The reason for the history lesson is that we went to see this silent protest take place, and we were amazed to see the crowd that still assembles to offer support, as the women parade round the central monument in the plaza holding each others hands, wearing white headscarves that symbolise unity and peaceful defiance, and carrying photographs of those they lost. It was a sobering afternoon, and a fitting one to sign off our experience in
South America with. It is a continent with so much beauty, but also one where many countries have suffered at the hands of military dictatorships and corrupt governments.
We loved our time in
Buenos Aires and
Argentina and feel like we will need to return one day to properly cover the vast array of sights and towns we didn’t get an opportunity to see.
The old way of making olive oil
The old way was to put olive paste in between each metal plate and then squeezing it in a vice. Very labour intensive compared to the automatic machine of today.
Mendoza, Argentina For now however, it is time to hop on a plane and leave
South America behind as we return to
Europe for our final chapter of our world trip.
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