Mendoza, Argentina

November 30 - December 02

The flight from Salta to Mendoza was a bumpy ride. At the time we did not realize, but the highest peak of the Andes, Aconcagua, is right behind Mendoza.  During landing, we saw some of the most dramatic landscapes we have ever seen.

We had decided to rent an apartment for our stay in Mendoza. Our taxi ride into town was interesting.  We came into the city at about 2pm and the entire city was dead.  I was confused, because it was not a weekend.  Only after our brief conversation with the taxi driver, did we realize that there is a strong culture of siesta in Mendoza as well.  Things shut off from 1pm to about 4pm here. The road for our apartment building was in the center of the town, and the address brought us in front of a shopping complex. We were a little confused, but our taxi driver was confident.
She parked in front of the shopping gallery and said: "let's go find it". She got out of the car and we followed her into the shopping gallery where, sure enough, we came across the office of the company we reserved the apartment with. The entrance to the apartment building was in the middle of the gallery. Another new experience for us!  We stayed in a fully furnished apartment in Mendoza for 3 nights.  Since we had a fully equipped kitchen, we cooked in the apartment on all the days.

Nicole and I absolutely fell in love with the city of Mendoza.  It is a very well planned and manageable city.  What really impressed us were the tree lined streets and the water channels which crisscrossed the entire city.  Mendoza is situated in the middle of a desert.  But the engineers who built this city, managed to design water canals that channel throughout the entire city and irrigate the trees. The water for this purpose is brought from a dam across the Mendoza river, which flows from the Andes.  The canals are extremely clean, with no obvious littering. Every street in this town is tree lined, helping to keep the city cooler compared to the desert outside!!

Since we arrived in the city in the evening, we spent our time recuperating and finding our bearings. Next morning, we left to explore the city.  The city has one main park in the center and four smaller parks on the four corners of the bigger park.  We spent the day walking through the main square of Mendoza and slowly making our way to the General San Martin park. The city was organizing many concerts at various locations and the stage was being prepared for one that evening.  Nicole and I decided to comeback later to check it out.  In the park, we stopped by the artificial lake to have a small picnic lunch. Even though our pictures don't show it, the lake was actually quite dirty and heavily littered!  We found a very nice bench by the shade and had a picnic lunch near the rose garden (which was in full bloom). Post lunch, we walked past the University and made our way to Cerro Gloria (a hill).  There is another Independence monument at the top of this hill, from where we had good views of the town and the Andes mountains (the view of the Andes was much more impressive).  We took the taxi back, as it was getting late in the afternoon and we wanted to rest for a bit before returning to the park for the concert in the evening.

The performances were part of a music festival called, AmeriCanto. Our first show was an all female acoustic group from Columbia performing traditional Cumbia.  Unfortunately, we only got to listen to two of their songs as we arrived a little late, and they were the best of all the groups  we saw.  Later, as we were making our way out at 11pm, more people were coming in with their picnic chairs and hot-water flasks for their mate! I believe the show was to go on until 2am.
Nicole and I rested quite a bit in Mendoza.  After our ordeal in Salta, we were still expelling "stuff" from our lungs/nose and were getting tired easily.  Booking an apartment was the best thing we had done as it gave us so much flexibility and we could take care of ourselves better.
For the second day in Mendoza, we had booked a tour of the Andes mountains. We were very conflicted, since we had wanted to see wine country, but considering our health at the time, the Andes was a much better option.

The tour bus picked us up early in the morning and we headed out on route 13 to the village of Uspallata.  On the way we stopped by an old abandoned hotel, which until the 70's was operational with hot spring baths. We had some beautiful views of the mountains here. Since we were travelling during spring, we always encountered bursts of yellow flower blooms along our way, which made the view even more beautiful.

Just before getting to the village, we came to an opening, which provided a breathtaking view of the Andes mountain range.  Our guide told us that filming for the movie "Seven Years in Tibet " was carried out here as the geography is similar to that of Tibet! We even saw another crew from an argentinian movie set working here at the time.  There was also an inscription along the way indicating the location visited by Charles Darwin, where he had found some petrified trees.

Out of nowhere, the green plains of the Uspallata village appeared in the Andean desert.  We stopped here for a break and explored the village by foot. The poplar trees really help in breaking the wind.  After that, we changed roads to go on route 7 towards Aconcagua. The ride was really great with breathtaking views of the Andes mountains.  We reached the spot for viewing the Aconcagua, but the peak was covered in clouds. Aconcagua is the tallest peak in the Americas. The ski resort next to the outlook was using the grounds for mountain biking in the summer.  We got to see riders zoom down the slopes and perform crazy jumps. We had hoped to take a chairlift ride up to the top of the slope, in order to take in some views, though couldn't because of this biking event. Instead we ventured further out up to the border of Chile.

After lunch, we made our way back and stopped at a spot  where the mountain springs deposit minerals and there is a natural bridge formation from these minerals. The location is called Puente del Incas. In the 70's an American hotel company wanted to exploit the natural mineral springs and decided to build a hotel nearby.  The hotel is now abandoned, and is not much of an eyesore since its away from the mineral deposits.  What is really disturbing are the bath-houses which were built right against the natural mineral bridge. These are really horrible and spoil the natural beauty of the place (seeing things like this along our journey was always frustrating). Anyway, the bridge which used to be open for folks to go check out is now cordoned off and only a few local families who live there are allowed access so that they can from time to time collect the mineral deposits for making souvenirs.

After this stop, we made our way back on Route 7 and stopped off at the dam outside of Mendoza city, where the Mendoza river is dammed off to create a big lake. The views from here was quite spectacular (as everywhere else along the Andes).   During the final stretch of our journey, we passed through several vineyards, which were on flat lands.  Our guide also told us that there are several oil drilling operations which are located in the middle of some vineyards!!!! Oil is a big industry here and another major employer in this area. Travelling is good in that way; it opens up your eyes to weird situations like this.

We finally made it to Mendoza city at about 7pm. We had initially planned to go out that evening, to a street that we were told was filled with restaurants/bars and where we could see some live music. Nicole seemed to have come down with another sore throat by the end of the day and needed to spend the evening nursing it. We decided to stay in.

The next morning, we made our way to plaza Espana, which has beautiful tiled fountains and murals.  The tiles for this park were imported from Italy.  After a some great coffee and salty croissants (yummy, yummy combination), we headed to the airport and took the flight out to Bariloche.