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Published: March 1st 2007
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Claire:
After a randomly uncomfortable night bus, we arrived in Mendoza and headed to out hotel (the Confluencia on España - excellent and cheap). The taxi driver took us the long way after ‘mishearing’ the street number I told him... bugger. The day we arrived was bloody roasting, it was too hot to even wander about town and we had to evolve a strategy of ducking into airconditioned places every few minutes. Already convinced i had DVT after waking up from the night bus with one extra swollen foot, i decided that the heat stroke would finish me off before the DVT became a real problem. The capacity for hypocondria really increases in foreign countries, its great.
Anyways, we had a little wander around the city, which has 5 plazas (slightly excessive i thought) and lots of cars. After our amazing rafting in Bariloche we headed pretty much straight for the travel place to book ourselves on some rafting on the Rio Mendoza, which we had heard was supposed to be some of the best in the country. We were extra excited to get out onto the river because of the scorching temperatures. When we arrived at the river the
next day however, it was freezing (for here) with an even colder wind and the water was baltic. So much for cooling off. The actual rafting was fun but a bit tame after the Rio Manso near Bariloche and our hands were frozen by the end of it due to the splashes of cold river and freezing gusts of wind.
Luckily we had decided to do some other activities after the rafting so we settled down at the company’s (Argentina Rafting - highly recommend them) little base camp and had some really good parrilla while we waited to begin our canopy adventure. For those who aren’t in the know, canopy is a course of several flying foxes (or death slides as Ross insists they be called). In our case these were between big hills and over rivers (much cooler than the ones through trees). This was lots of fun and i enjoyed it more than the rafting, especially when we got to hang upside down from one of the guys leading the activity (see photos).
That night, following the Lonely Planet’s suggestion, we went for steak at La Barra restaurant. To be honest it was sucky, possibly the worst
cuts of steak we’ve had yet (thought they were well cooked but this made no difference as they were so chewy and tough that i had a sore jaw by the end of it) and they cost a bomb. I would definately not recommend it. We got ice-cream on the way home to cheer ourselves up.
The next day we spent slogging away on the blog for you lot so we could get our cool glacier photos online and wandering around the different plazas trying to figure out why they need so many of them. Then we jumped on the night bus to Córdoba (where we plan to go paragliding!).
Ross:
After a short flight and a night back in BA we jumped the night bus to Mendoza and arrived into a furnace. It was blazing hot and after being ripped off in the taxi ride to the hotel we headed out to explore the city and book some rafting. A short wander and Claire decided it was too hot to continue so we found a pavement cafe to chill out in while we waited for the rafting place to open after its siesta. The
idea of rafting seemed excellent after the fun we’d had in Bariloche, the recommendation of the lonely planet that it was even better in Mendoza and the fantastic weather all combined to make us think this was going to be the best rafting experience of our lives.
However the next day started off overcast and cold and as Claire already says it got alot worse when we got to the river. The rapids were all class 1 or 2 with I think maybe one class 3, which after Bariloche (all class 3 and 4 rapids) felt more like an inflatable ring ride you get at big water parks. Still wasn’t all bad Claire had managed to talk me out of doing a whole days rafting thankfully and instead we’d gone for the conopy tour. Something of a misnomer as there aren’t any trees in the mountains that surround Mendoza; so it was from the tops of big hills and over rivers, I thought this was going to be a bit crap - something to keep the kids happy - but it was great fun especially going upside down on the death slides. There’s loads of stuff to do at
the Argentina Rafting base camp and I could have happily spent all day there paintballing and ATVing (activites we didn’t know about, or I would have signed up for these). They also offer a seriously good and cheap parrilla.
La Barra was a very big dissapointment I spent most of the night trying to find the meat amongst the slab of fat that was put in front of me, the wine was nice though as was the salad if a little prematurley served. This wasn’t enough to justify the exorbiant price though.
At the rafting we had been lead to belive that the weather of that day was the norm for Mendoza and the scorching heat of the previous day was a very rare occurance, but our last day in the city was almost as nice as the day we arrived (why couldn’t it have been like this when we went rafting, curse this infernal climate change thing) so we went a tour of the city's plazas after spending most of the afternoon blogging and enjoying the weather in pavment cafes again (could get used to this). Next stop Cordoba.
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