Tour de Mendoza

I just got back from a great weekend in Mendoza, Argentina on Sunday. Along with Chris and Shu, two guys from ND, I traversed the Andes Mountains by bus and spent a long weekend exploring the Argentinian city. It was great to get out of Chile (although I love Chile) and see a different part of South America. The bus trip over took about 6 hours of driving and an hour and a half of waiting at customs at the border, but WOW was it a great bus trip! The scenery was so incredible that this might actually have been my favorite part of the trip. There are not very many mountain passes between the two countries and most are closed during the winter because they are often impassable with the snow. On the other hand, in the heart of summer vacation time, getting through customs can take a whopping 7 hours! I´ve included pictures from the trip above, but the pictures just don´t do the mountains justice. The Andes dwarf you and the road is built on a steep hill with a precipitous drop-off. Driving a car here takes a strong stomach, let alone a 40+ pasenger bus.

To give you a perspective on the rest of the trip, it suffices to say that we slept all of about 7 hours all weekend. Kinda makes you wonder why we even paid for the hostel... We were busy. After arriving real early Friday morning, we found a breakfast cafe, dropped our stuff off at the hostel and set off to nearby Maipu, known for it´s numerous vineyards. Here we rented bikes for the day and set off for one of the best days of my trip so far. After riding down 7 km, with a bats-out-of-hell pace, we stopped at our first vineyard, Carinae, a little boutique winery owned by a French couple. We toured the traditional artesenal factory and reserves and followed this with a delicious tasting. After discovering that the olive oil factory across the street was closed, we set off for another vineyard, Vistandes, a larger, more modern production. And so continued our day, visiting wineries, a beer garden, and a liquor/chocolate/jam factory. In the end, I can honestly say I learned a lot about wine tasting. My expertise went from being able to distinguish a white wine from a red wine before the trip, to being able to distinguish a young wine from one that has been aged in oak. Not bad for a days work!

After the exhausting day, we went to an all-you-can-eat buffet. For $12 USD I ate my heart's content (and more) of Argentinian beef, pork, and chicken. Argentina is known for it's high quality cheap meat, and it certainly didn't disappoint. As for the Argentinian beer, let's just say I was less than impressed. For a country with so many German immigrants, they should really have better beer. We did manage to find some descent ones, but it took a lot of searching and the mainstream brands taste like water (cough, cough... Quilmes). Wine's a better accompaniment to steak anyways.

Our second day was spent wandering around Mendoza, appreciating the relaxed feel of the city. Coming from Santiago, it really feels tiny. The highlight of the day was however a soccer game. Shu and Chris were in a small soccer shop looking at some jerseys when the store keeper told us about a big soccer game that was in town. We didn't have anything better to do, so we made our way over to the stadium, bought some tickets with the crazy fanatics (we supported Godoy Cruz, the Mendoza team, over Independiente), and entered into one of the craziest atmospheres I have ever experienced. I thought ND fans could get wild, but I'm sorry, we don't even compare. I'll try to give you the best impression of the populares section, as they call the seats for the hardcore fans behind each net, as I can. First of all, the entire section was encircled with barbed wire, in order to keep these fans away from the families that were sitting in other sections and probably more importantly, the fanatics of the other team. Inside the barbed wire it was lawless. There were people next to us smoking marijuana, 10 year old kids swearing their mouths off, and fans throwing objects at the cops (they were behind a fence and wearing complete riot gear so no harm was done). Although there were probably over 100 police officers at the game, exactly zero were inside these populares sections. They were however strategically positioned outside of the section in order to prevent the spread of the lawlessness. The game was a blast, as Godoy Cruz breezed to a 4-1 victory. Not too bad for a team we decided to root for only on the way into the stadium, without any prior knowledge.

As for the Argentinians, I loved them. They are characteristically very outgoing and talk with a really cool accent. It was a little tough getting used to it after becoming accustomed to Chilean Spanish but everything worked out. As is the case in Chile, we also found in Argentina that random people on the street started impromptu conversations with us, loving to share whatever tid-bit of their culture they could. In both countries, they are very happy and proud that we have chosen to study abroad in their country.

As for the Chilean side of my weekend, my program attended a beautiful folkloric dance show by BAFONA (Baile Folcrórico Nacional) on Thursday before we headed out to Mendoza. BAFONA is one of the best known Chilean folkloric dance groups and they didn't disappoint, performing dances from Northern Chile, Central Chile, Southern Chile, and Easter Island (owned by Chile). I've gotten a ton of chances to see Chilean dancing while here, but this was clearly the most professionally performed with the best dancers (although I have to say that the show by my two brothers at their school was also pretty awesome!). We were also surprised to hear that the Chinese ambassador to Chile was in attendance and was brought up on stage with many other people from the audience at the end of the show to dance the cueca, Chile's national dance. That guy can move!

Sorry about the length, I just didn't want to leave anything out. I wish I could say future posts will be shorter, but I am heading off to Peru on Thursday to visit Cusco, Machu Picchu, and the surrounding Sacred Valley. Therefore, my next post will probably be a long one as well.