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Friday was dia del trabajo or labor day so I didn't have to attend class or teach lessons. So on Thursday night me and Julia hopped on a bus to Mendoza. The bus was a 14 hour trip that took us from the east side of Argentina to the west side. I slept some on the way over, but managed to wake up to see the sunrise. It wasn't long after that the Andes mountains appeared on the horizon. We were dropped off at the bus station and walked to our hostile. After some brief complications regarding reservations we were able to get in to our rooms. We dropped our stuff off and headed for the large man made park. Mendoza is sort of a desert, but has set up an irrigation system from the mountains. You'd never know it was a desert, because everywhere you hear the sound of running water. The park was wonderful and full of people picnicking because of the off day. The rest of Friday was spent exploring the city, which was nice and full of plazas. But it was an early to bed night due to the long trip and having to get up early
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This was taken while I was paragliding, looking out the next day to go biking around the bodegas. The bodegas we went to were in a Maipu which is just a little bit outside of Mendoza. We rented bikes and got a map and headed off. The vineyards were beautiful, but far apart, and the bikes we got weren't the best. We did manage to make it to a few of them, one of them was actually an olive oil bodega. We did some wine and oil tasting which was great. At one of the bodegas we took a tour and there happened to be a couple from the UP there. They had been living in Maywood before moving up to Houghton. It was a little odd, but fun. Not knowing much about wine, I thought it was good, and the olive oil was delicious. We returned our bikes and found out that our problems of sore legs and rears where pretty minuscule compared to the people who had to be brought back by the police which their bikes fell apart.
Since so far we had seen the city and the vineyards, Sunday was left as a day for the Mountains. We decided to go parapente(paragliding) in the Andes.
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From paragliding looking down The trip was not without its problems. Me, Julia and Erin-who was another girl from the same hostile- got picked up and driven to the small little base camp. As we got closer to the mountains we were able to see that it really was a desert. Our guides car broken down going up one of the hills and we were forced to wait for someone to come back and get us. We finally made it there and after waiting for a while and seeing the group before us land, we were headed up the mountain-mind you without having signed any sort of waivers or anything. The trip up the mountain was rugged, but beautiful. When we reached the top we were told it was 2000 meters where we would be jumping off from. I didn't really explain what paragliding was before, but to be fair we didn't get much of an explanation either while we were waiting. We all got strapped into our harnesses and met our respective pilots. Erin took off first with only one false start. Once strapped to your pilot they tell you, walk when I say walk, run when I say run and don't sit
until I say so. They then throw the chute up into the air and run you off the side of the mountain. We had problems with our take offs because the wind was coming from a bad direction. After Erin took off, Julia and her pilot tried a couple of times to no avail. It was at that point that my pilot decide we were going and said run. After a few steps there just wasn't anything below my feet and I sat down to enjoy the sights. The view was incredible and I managed to take a few pictures. The trip probably took 10 minutes, but felt like 5 seconds. After getting out from the mountains we needed to drop our altitude. At this point my pilot asked me if I liked tricks, so I said yea. The tricks which helped us lose speed and altitude were swinging back and forth until I could see the chute below me. It was stomach turning. I landed standing up and managed not to fall. From there it was straight to the bus station and on to another 14 hour ride home.
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