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Published: August 7th 2010
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Next stop Mendoza. This is a region in Argentina which is famous for its wine tours white water rafting and treks up the Andes. It was late and night and bitter cold. (-7 like really cold….). Once again we walked around with our homes on our backs for 2 hours before we found somewhere to stay. I’ve taken to singing ‘Away In a Manger’ when we’re walking door to door getting rejected at every turn. Needless to Say Gary and Rico find this less than amusing. Cheers me up tho. the next morning we got up late and took to wandering around Mendoza in search of some activity to do the following day.
At this stage we had done quite a lot of traipsing around cities and were looking forward to getting out of town and doing some stuff. An hour into our search we realized we only had one option. This was a 2 hour trek, some abseiling and hot springs. All other options were canceled due to the terrible weather conditions. We signed on for this and went on our regular ritual of buying bus tickets. En-route to the bus stations we passed a hairdresser. I got the notion
I wanted to get my hair dyed. The roots were after getting rather dark. So in I went in my still very poor Spanish and ascertained that it would cost about £10 to colour my hair. I decided to go for it. The colour worked out grand but when I went to pay it actually cost £30. I know this is still not expensive but when I found out that the extra 20 were for brushing and blowdrying I was very annoyed. Still tho a lot cheaper than home. Think the dole won’t support my blondeness.
Next day we got up early and joined our tour group of about 30 people to go for on our trip. We drove for about 2 hours along a really scenic snowy route until we got to a national park. Here we were all allocated our harnesses and crash helmets for the absaling and off we went up the side of the mountain. It was really snowy and cold so we didn’t mind at all doing a bit of a trek. We were luckier than most though because we’d our boots on which saved us from slipping back down the ice. It was a
tough enough uphill but the pace was slow and for once we were at the start of the pack. It was really nice to do a trek without altitude playing a crippling part. Once we reached the top of a hill where there was a statue of Our Lady we began the decent down. Yvonne slipped on the way down and grabbed onto a plant at the side to keep herself upright. This was a bad plan. I would have been better off falling. The plant turned out to be a cactus of some breed and quickly injected a few really deep thorns under my skin. Oh I forgot to mention for this day out in the snow I was wearing socks on my hands instead of gloves. I couldn’t find them anywhere the morning we left. After pulling out most the thorns and moaning quite a bit we arrived at the first abseiling point. There was no other way down except down the rock face.
Gary went first and was shaky at the start but no bother at all after that, he even jumped the last bit. The boy that can’t climb isn’t afraid to jump off stuff.
Strange! Then when my turn came my mind went kinda blank. Instructed found the socks on my hands amusing and announced the fact to everyone around. But I held my head high. I leaned back as instructed but never moved my legs back. I was nearly hanging upside down. The instructor also found this quite funny, after nearly wetting himself he told me to swing until my feet hit the rock. I did as he said and didn’t make the same mistake again. It was more exhausting than I thought it would be, very tough on my arms. Probably cause I was hanging on for dear life though. There were 2 more after this, they were fun. Everybody got more confident and had a bit of a laugh. The guides were amazing at it. They were sprinting down the 100meter cliff face without a bother. Great stuff. I’d love to do it again.
It was very cold once we stopped hiking and there was quite a lot of waiting around while everyone abseiled down. We were freezing by the time it was all over. Luckily there was lunch and hot springs in the package too so off we went
with great expectations. The lunch wasn’t great it was a cold lomito. These are beef sandwich things. But the beef is really tough and coated in this horrible soggy batter. Then we went to the hot springs, these were absolutely packed. It was a Sunday and I suppose that what Argentina people do on Sundays in the snow. The setting was amazing, there were 4 pools of varying temperatures inside and outside. The ones outside were right alongside snowy mountains. It was a heaven after a strenuous morning. Great tour all in all.
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