medoza - city of eternal burning

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So after the not so great city of cordoba we have travelled to mendoza, home of argentina´s wine industry.

arriving first thing in the morning in the middle of argentina´s tourist season, hotels can be a bit hard to come by, however upon arriving we utilized a full fledged tourist information booth including the service to book hotels. the onus was off me. yeah. so we finnaly got a 3 star hotel that had twin bed´s, but on our arrival, pushed them together and made a double just for Debbie and myself. what can i say about the service sometimes. another casual observation about argentine service, is that no one in particular is in a hurry. at the internet cafe, of a cafe ordering coffee to a restaraunt and bar, you´ll get your service, eventually. good thing that we were not in a hurry.

so after a particularly grueling bus trip from cordoba, the first thing that i ordered at the cafe was - cafe irlandes (aka coffee with a dollop of whiskey). wow, that put me in my place at 9:00 in the morning with Debbie being able to smell the whiskey after i took a sip from across the table. if i could only start every weary day like this without developing a drinking problem.

the next day, we went horseback riding in the Andes. This is the first time that i was riding a horse in a year since my Lawrence of Arabia inpersonation at the Great Pyramid´s in Egypt. When i told the other people on the treck, their response was that most people go to Egypt to ride camels. Well, Debbie´s first camel experience was in Argentina but i wasn´t going to dispute them in the fact´s and odd occurences of my travels. Base camp was an hour out of the city at an altitude of about 1600m, with Medoza being about 700m about sea level. already i felt the oxygen difference when we stepped off the bus. Since we were thinking that we were only riding in the hills and not the mountains proper, we had packed lightly, meaning that i had a rain jacket and debbie had brought nothing. Offereing debbie my only protection against the elements we proceeded to ride into the montaiñe Andes. Debbie obviously loved the whole experience since i´ve never seen her smile so much continually. even the other people on our trip commented on how much Debbie was smiling, making me feel even more happy (funny how making your girl happy makes you happy). So after our motley international crew of one other canadian, an american and 3 britains made our way to upper alpine meadows, about 2000m above our original position (highest point was 3700m) to a total elevation gain in one day of about 3000m. at the top i was feeling a head ache coming on, meaning that i was suffering already in my brief exposure of ALS. Going up on the horses was one thing, but coming down was a completely different one. One must establish the bond between rider and horse quickly, and my steed for the day, India was more than an ample companion. Early on, when riding there was the constant fighting and establishing who was actually master, but coming down, a bond was established with me only making noises (kk - to go, and sh - to slow down and stop). after this brief excursion a BBQ was held, where we discussed among things the Alberta Rat Patrol, where the New Yorker and British were amazed that there are no rats in alberta.

the next day we went white water rafting on the Rio Mendoza. We planned the halfway trip meaning that we'll be on the river for 12 km, and for about 1.5 hours. since we were the only people that had signed up for the trip and you need at least 4 people in the raft, we got upgraded to the 18km 3 hour trip free of charge. This was debbies first time rafting and what an experience it was. class 1 to very large class 3 rapids (i could even argue in some places a class 4 existed), the river was brown with the runoff from the surrounding andes. it was really cool, to float down the river, and listen to the sounds of the rocks moving underneath us, pushed by the force of the river. I'm calling it my 'rock music'. 3 hours later, we finally got back into our base camp and rested our weary bodies.

sorry again, but i'm having troubles finding a USB port on a computer in a cyber cafe. pictures will be added at first opprotunity.

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Comments

[michele]

Pictures
Your Grandma and Grandpa would of been very pleased to get a picture of you on a camel in the Andes! Shivering! but smiling! too!