Mendoza

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The route through the Andes, from Santiago, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina, is renowned for often being closed due to snow. We were lucky and got across on our first try. Looking out the windows of our bus we could see why it could be a hazardous route. Chair lifts filled with keen skiers sailed past us as we twisted and turned through mountains. Any significant layer of snow would have clearly made this trip treacherous. Luckily the only sign of snow was atop the mountains, leaving the road clear and so on we went.

It was our fourth land border crossing and by far the most efficient (and also coldest).First you visited the Chile desk to be stamped out, then one quick side step to the right and you are at the Argentina desk ready to be stamped in. Simple. Usually, getting between the two border offices involves reboarding the bus and being driven five minutes down the road before traipsing off and on the bus again.

During the planning stages of our trip Chris had been adamant that whilst in Argentina he wanted to drink Malbec, visit a ranch and go horse riding. Mendoza satisfied these three wishes entirely.

A really nice hostel, close to town and the supermarket, made for a relaxing few days filled with excursions. The only difficult part of Mendoza was exchanging our money. In Argentina, the official exchange rate makes the country quite expensive to visit from overseas. Argentina suffers from significant inflation and as such the dollar continuously increases in value compared to the Argentinian peso. The Argentinian government interfere with the exchange rate, keeping the value of the Argentinian peso artificially high; the Argentinians want to therefore buy dollars to ensure themselves against future inflation. Because of this you can sell US dollars within the country at a higher rate than you can officially exchange. They call this the blue market, and the rate allows for a much cheaper visit if you are willing to partake in it. Exchanging money on the blue market is, for one, illegal. Secondly, this illegality makes it quite a seedy process. Armed with our US dollars we had exchanged in Santiago we headed out, listening for a man shouting 'cambio' (change). We were in luck. It's like they have a radar for newbies to Argentina. We had read on various blogs and web pages not to deal with anyone who openly changes the money on the street, instead they should take you into a nearby restaurant or shop, usually owned by their friend. So what does the guy we're selling to do, yes, you've got it; he starts counting out his Argentinian Pesos on the street, my antenna were raised but it was too late, we'd committed. Luckily it all went well and we had our Argentinian pesos.

First things first, the wine. A trip from the hostel along with some other like minded backpackers took us firstly to a large winery, Bodegas Lopez, who export a high percentage of their wine. Unfortunately we were unable to view their vineyards as they kept them far away from any roads and the accompanying pollution. Their workings were vast with large stainless steel machinery alongside robot like workers who had to sit for hours checking by eye that the labels were on the bottles correctly. We were not envious of their job as we got to leave the factory floor and go and sample the goods. A white and a red were on offer. Now, normally I am not really a red wine drinker, let alone white wine but these were top of the range, Chateau Vieux and Montchenot, and I found I could handle the sample glass quite nicely. We selected a small 375ml bottle for 80p to take away and enjoy with dinner, having to resist a lot of their reasonably priced high end goods which would have made excellent gifts for those back home. Our tour continued to an olive oil factory, which personally was my favourite. Here, after a quick look at their machinery, which wasn't in use at the time as they only processed the olives early in the day, we got to try all the various flavoured oils. The rosemary infused oil was rather delicious and Chris and I both agreed that if we were off home from here we would have spent a lot of our Argentinian Pesos on olive oil. Our last stop was a small boutique winery, Domiciano de Barrancas, The owner makes his wine how he likes it and not to the mass markets tastes. A Rachel Cranshaw lookalike took us through the factory, it was tiny compared to what we had seen earlier and they only made three types of wine here, exporting a miniscule amount. You wouldn't find this is any supermarkets here. We of course got to taste some, thoroughly enjoying the black label Syrah Reservation Nocturnal. We spent that evening relaxing whilst enjoying a bar of dairy milk ( it didn't taste anything like dairy milk!) and working our way through a few pages of Where's Wally back at the hostel.

The next day fulfilled the latter two of Chris' wishes. Chris mounted his horse, coincidentally named Rosie. She was a well behaved horse, especially compared to my horse, Colorado, who was extremely lazy. They had told us to whip them, which of course I didn't, but our guide riding alongside threatening the whip would get him moving for a hundred metres or so, when he would get bored of catching up with the others and decide to walk really, really slowly again. To be honest, I was pretty happy with the slow pace, plodding along slowly taking in the view. Once the ranch was in sight though Colorado soon picked up his pace and raced to get back to the stables where I'm sure he had an apple or two waiting for him. While we had been out, our cowboy chef had been busy cooking up a BBQ feast.
We shared a table with the rest of our group, who were tolerable when alone but as a group were unfortunately led by their ape like hooligan Australian buddy who would struggle to take on a sloth in a battle of wits. His crass behaviour was constantly either racist, sexist, homophobic or any combination of the above. He was a moron. However, we didn't let this ruin our day and thoroughly enjoyed the endless supply of grilled cheese, potatoes, egg filled peppers, steak, sausage, chicken and of course the wine.
As was normally the the case our hostel was the last drop off that day, but it was worth the wait when on the departure of our new friends the driver gave a sigh of relief, laughing and gesturing to us that the others had been so loud. We joined in laughing with him as he drove the last few kilometres to our hostel.

The next morning we enjoyed our last amazing breakfast from the hostel, cake (yes, we are still eating cake for breakfast), cereal, juice, fruit, tea, coffee and best of all, freshly made dulce de leche pancakes. Dulce de leche had quickly become my favourite Argentinian food. A caramel-esque sauce which would make any food taste good. With a lazy day waiting for our overnight bus we passed the time in a local park, being offered a fresh fish wrapped in newspaper that some school kids were selling (we declined, wondering where it had come from as we were so far from the sea) and being used as a shield in a grass fight among some boys; and later watching two dogs fight over a fish on the ground which may or may not have been the same one as earlier.

By now we had long conquered the overnight South American bus and a good nights sleep awaited us before our last stop in South America, Buenos Aires.

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Comments

[uncle howie]

sounds like fun, with a mix of human sociology!
Glad you are still Okay and enjoying the experiences, including the illegal FX trading on the streets of Argentina! LOL You could have started another an international incident between us and them LOL