Mendoza, at the foothils of the Andes

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After celebrating Passover dinner – "liel haseder" in Bariloche, I took once again a comfortable argentine bus to the city of Mendoza – which is down to the Andes Mountains and its famous vineyards (the biggest in Latin America) enjoys water from the Andes for irrigation. The ride took 17 hours and it was long – especially because I couldn’t eat almost anything from the service that was included in the bus ticket because of Passover. After the holiday dinner and for the whole week of Passover, Jewish people are supposed to avoid any flour made food, especially bread, pasta and so. Instead, there is special bread which has not risen - It’s a very thin bread call "matza". In the pictures you can see what my breakfast at the hostel in Mendoza was made of – regular coffee, jam and dolce de leche, but without any bread – just rice crackers (which are not made out of flour).

Anyhow, after a long bus ride, with little sleep, and some medium quality American movies in the small bus TV – I had arrived to Mendoza. The city is medium size (Wikipedia says that there are less than 200,000 people in city of Mendoza but the whole metropolitan area is big and is the fourth in size in Argentina). There are no skyscrapers around the city center but the city is considered very modern. There was a big earthquake in Mendoza in the 19th century (1861) that destroyed most of the city and so all of the buildings are relatively new, but still with an old fashion look.

I really enjoyed walking around the city center – the big square park (plaza independencia) in the middle and the four small parks at every corner of the big plaza, all build in an old fashioned Spanish style. There is also a great promenade not far from the center (at sermiento street) with modern café's. I walked around the promenade and remembered that I was sitting there, at the Havana café, on my previous visit to Mendoza, 10 years ago. Then, I remember I set with some Israeli guys which was a comfort to me as it was the holocaust memorial day in Israel that day and it felt better to be with some other Israelis that day.

Any how, this time, after sitting at the Havana café and enjoying the big renovation over there (still, it has been ten years since my previous visit…), I wanted to try another very modern café – I went into the "bianco and nero" café - white and black in Italian. The espresso was excellent, and so were the little bits of chocolate served for free next to the coffee. The ice-cream I got, one of their dolce de leche flavors (out of many) if I remember correctly, was really really good as well. The waitress, young Mendozinians, serving all this treats were very nice and so – if you ever cross the sermiento promenade in Mendoza, my recommendation for you is to have some peaceful and tasty break at this café. Way the Italian name? Like there are a lot of immigrants from Italy in Buenos Aires there are in Mendoza as well and I guess it's related.

In the pictures you can also see the urban indoor market of Mendoza, and a chocolatier store – homemade Mendoza chocolate, which is good at list as the Bariloche chocolate. Also, the Jewish menorah statue – dedicated to the state of Israel.

Next – a few days side trip to the small town of uspallata (uspazata), located a couple of hours west to Mendoza, on the road the Santiago De Chile, in a beautiful valley. From there I took a bus and did a short track to the view point of the Aconcagua mountain, the highest peak in both north and south America.

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