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Published: February 2nd 2007
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Llullaillaco
Sits on the Chile/Argentine border Okay, so we were in San Martin for 2 days, just to get our bearings on Aregentina and to decided where and what we wanted to do here.
San Martin was very much a ski/winter town and was pretty dead at this time of year so it was nice to have some breathing space. The cities here are just so big and so busy that we get a bit overwhelmed at times. So all we did in San Martin was organise our travels for Argentina.
We moved on to Mendoza which is a city of just over 1 million people. We arrived at 7am and just walked across the road to our hostel which was great cause we were knackered from our bus ride. The hostel was great and had a roof terrace which gave a nice outlook over some of the city. Meet a strange Australian guy that didnt mind telling us that he didnt like Kiwis!!!
That day we walked to the 420 hectare park in the middle of the city to try and get to the zoo....no such luck. We walked for over 2 hours around the place looking for it but just couldnt find it
even with the map of the park. Still is was a lovely walk with the maple trees sheeding their leaves and the lake with the rowers on it, people here seem not to work cause no matter what time we were out in the day there were families walking around and shopping and in cafes etc..
That night there were markets in the Plaza of Independance so we decided to have a look around at all the crafts etc. I managed to buy a cute handbag and Josh got another braclet (after Sarah broke his other one 😊 ).
Next day we had another attempt at finding the zoo and managed to in just over half and hour by walking another way around the park!!! On the walk up the path to the zoo a dog decided to follow us and continued to do so through the zoo and all the way back to the hostel....that was about 3 hours of following it did.
We saw some animals that we had not seen before like Grizzly Bears and Pumas. One thing to note is that when we were walking down one of the paths we noticed that there was
a wire at about knee level to fence off a cage, so we decided to find out what animal was so tame that it only needed a wire to keep it in and we found out that it was the back of the Grizzlys cage!!! Scary shit man!!!
There were also monkeys swinging freely from the trees and that kinda freaked me out cause they were getting really rauchus because of the dog and they were jumping down from the trees swinging in front of us and making heaps of noise. It was a pretty big place but the cages for the animals were really small and it was strange cause they had big animals like the lions in small cages and small animals the in the bigger than small cages, not sure how they figured that one out!?! Also they had birds like hawks and egales in cages the size that we put our monkeys in!!! Not good.
We really liked Mendoza, it was a relaxed tree filled city that I could definatley visit again.
We then thought it would be a good idea to go to Rosario, but managed to stay there for only 3 or
4 hours because we caught a taxi to the hostel we wanted to stay in, it was full, we then went to 3 other hostels and they were also full and we were told most of them where and they couldnt give us any advice on where to stay that wasnt. We then decided maybe we should get the ferry to Isla Invernada (an island just out of the city) to camp and relax for a couple of days at the beach. We hailed yet another taxi to take us the ferry terminal but he had no idea where he was going and just decided to drive along the waterfront with us in his taxi...we stopped him and got out and decided to just get out of the city cause we had already spent a days money on taxis taking us nowhere and it didnt look promising that if we spent more on one we were going to get any further. Gutted about that one cause I had been told good things about the city.
Next port of call was and is Mar del Plata
We have been here for 4 days and have also loved it here.
We have hung out at the beach, walked along the waterfront and watched some amazing water display made by the waves hitting the rocks, to the port, to the sea lion colony, up a tower to view the city, watched people dancing and break dancing in the square and just generally had a good time. I also managed to get myself a stalker when I ventured out on my own one afternoon, the guy followed me from one of the pedestrain plazas and tried to talk to me ( I told him I didnt speak Spanish) and asked me to go with him for coffee and followed me all the way back to our hostel which is a good 10min walk from where he started following. I started to get a bit freaked and thought about running away but Im sure he was harmless!
We have now booked our bus ride to Bueno Aires and will be leaving tomorrow morning
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