Sth America 07-08: 6. Mendoza

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Mendoza

The overnight bus to Mendoza was everything that the bus on the trip from Sao Paulo to Foz de Iguazu wasn't. I chose the correct class finally, which was similar to airline business class. We had leather seats that turned into proper beds, roast chicken and champagne for dinner, and a continental breakfast with the local newspaper.

Mendoza is a small city on the eastern flank of the Andes. It is famous for producing the best wine in Argentina. There are wineries everywhere to tour. Every street in the city cente is tree lined to beat the heat, and I have had my first encounter with the siesta. Imagine the main street of a town like Tamworth or Dubbo in the midel of the day. It is absolutely full of people. At 1 o´clock everything shuts, except for the restaurants and a few tourist shops, and will reopen from 4pm to 8pm. It is also fulll of mountaineering shops, as this is the access point for people who wish to go climbing in the High Sierras.

I decided that the main purpose of visiting wineries is to sample the wine, and as I have been to wineries before I cut to the chase, and setled down in an outdoor cafe in the main pedestrian mall to sample the wine. I have to agree that the wines was beautiful. As I was having steak I ordered a bottle of red wine. It was everything Australian reds are, without the earthy aftertaste so many of them have. The meal and bottle of wine cost the princely sum of $8. The only trouble with eating dinner and having a wine so late is getting up. The next morning my bus was leaving at 8.30am for the 6 hr trip over the Andes to Santiago de Chile. Thankfully my bag was packed, as I woke up at 7.33am. I had just enough time to put on my old clothes, pay my hostel bill, throw the pack on my back and hot foot it for the bus terminal, about 1 km away. I made it right on 8am, enough time to buy something to eat and drink before the trip. The trip was quite interesting. Not exactly what I expected, which was climbing thrtough vast snow covered peaks. Instead we wound up steadily through a valley through some quite large mountains, to a tunnel which runs for a few kilometres under the peaks to the western side of the mountain. The rivers all started flowing towards the Pacific Ocean. Not long later we hit the frontier, and after a search of our baggage and bus that would have done an airport proud we were on our way into Chile. The run down the mountain was much more hairraising than the trip up. We seemed to fall a thousand metres straight down a series of switchbacks, where the edge was protected by a yellow painted line, which the front corner of the bus, where I was sitting, seemed to cross over every corner. After that just a boring run through the countryside to Santiago.

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