We've spent the last 3 days in Mendoza, Argentina's wine capital, soaking up the atmosphere of the city and visiting vineyards in the surrounding area. It takes 6-7 hours to travel from Santiago to Mendoza by bus, and I recommend doing it when the full moon is out, highlighting every crevice and patch of snow of the mighty Andean cordillera which the bus has to snake its way over. Mendoza itself is flat and reminiscent of Hanoi with its tree-lined streets. Full of parks, it's a relaxing city despite its 1 million inhabitants.
The morning we arrived, however, was all but relaxing. We arrived at around 4:30 am and tried sleeping on our new camping mats on the bus terminal floor, waiting for the city to wake up, but were cruelly told by a janitor that we weren't allowed to do so. Later, we stupidly decided to go to a camping area 6 km outside the city despite a taxi driver telling us that most of them were closed, and despite the fact that more logical alternatives to camping were lurking in the back of our heads. So we took two taxis to the end of the world, which was also Hell's Angels territory, finally found a campsite we had called before and had been told was full of annoying kids, were now also told that there were no other campsites opened, took the bus back to the city, almost got thrown off the bus because we didn't have change for the ticket machine and no one, and I mean noooo one, had change in that stupid place and finally made it to the center of town around 9ish. 50 meters from the bus stop we found a perfect hostel owned by an Argentinian/Japanese woman and her Argentinian husband and, tired and frustrated with our own stupidity, we slept for a few hours. The rest of the day, we were rather lucid and just visited park after park after park in the neighbourhood.
The next day was finally spent doing something again, after days and days of laziness. We went to a town called Maipú, rented bikes and visited wineries, an olive oil factory and a chocolate factory. The surroundings were beautiful, the tours were interesting and informative and the tasting was yummy; a perfect day. When we came to return the bikes to Norma and Hugo, the couple that were renting them out, we were treated to more wine and I also had my first taste of máte. We spent a few hours talking to our hosts and their daughter, stroking their cats and dog and laughing at their crazy talking parrot. Charles, now known as Carlito, was much loved by Hugo and the goodbye was on the verge of being sentimental.
Today we came back to Santiago, going through a different border crossing this time and getting fined 25 euros for not declaring 2 apples in Nadja's bag. In 20 minutes we're going to Puerto Montt in the south of Chile, and soon we'll hopefully get some use of our new tents!
