Mendoza

Mendoza

If wasn’t for the pre-Columbian irrigation canals receiving water from the Andes mountains, Mendoza would probably not be in existence. Mendoza is literally a “desert oasis.” There are approximately 130,000 people within the city limits and an additional 850,000 if you include all the different towns and barrios surrounding Mendoza. I include this information because Mendoza has a small city feel. Why are we in Mendoza? Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina. There are roughly 1000 wineries in the Mendoza Province. Our plan is to visit two wineries per day, three days a week. Adjacent to the right is a pic of another protest happening in Argentina. We stayed back a little. The protest was regarding BUSH.

We arrived in Mendoza on May 8^th and we stayed at the Argentino Hotel across from Plaza Independecia and the Park Hyatt (listed in the top 100 hotels in the World by Travel&Leisure). There are so many Americans here! It’s refreshing to talk with other Americans and gives us a break from the Spanish language. Mendoza is a small city; across from our hotel we parked right next to a guy who we met in El Chalten, (he is from Seattle and also sold his house and quit his job and drove down to South America). We actually met a couple from Portland at our hotel. Our first Oregonians! Additionally, we met a couple from the Southern U.S. who have been living outside Buenos Aires with their 1.5 year old boy since January and our now touring Argentina before leaving in 3 weeks. Very nice family. Payton enjoyed playing with their boy, Matheus, at the park across the street from the hotel and we enjoyed drinking wine and vodka tonics together prior to them leaving.

After a couple of days looking for an affordable, long-term apartment we decided to stay in a small suburb outside of Mendoza city, Godoy Cruz. There is definitely a business opportunity and need for someone to have furnished rentals online. We only say 3 different websites with rentals and 2 of the 3 only offered one rental (they were both the owners of the apartment). We are paying 700 USD for a two bedroom 1 bath apartment with secured parking. The only downfall, no internet. Oh well. We will be here for 1 month then get another house outside the city that’s larger and has a big yard.

After being here one week we have experienced some great food and wine. We will compile a list of our favorite wineries at the end of our time in Mendoza. However, we have been to 4 different wineries and one gourmet wine & cheese tasting and have concluded that we will be having a good time here. The only downfall with Mendoza is the minimal mountain bike opportunities. I’ll have to go to a tour company for some ideas.

We visited the local aquarium and reptile museum. Wow! The aquarium looks like it’s part of a local freak show. It’s old and dirty with skeletons, stuffed fish (with eyes and skin falling off and small aquariums with too many fish inside of them. Across the street from the aquarium is a reptile museum. We found that there are a lot of snakes in Argentina; especially in the North. Makes the whole idea of biking alone in the desert a little more exciting.

Later in the week we visited the local zoo, to our surprise we really enjoyed ourselves. We first started walking up a cement path and came across some monkeys (not in cages) grabbing garbage out of the garbage can (one monkey was attempting to drink Coke from a bottle). To our amazement there were 10-15 monkeys in the trees above us jumping from tree to tree. Luckily, no poop was flung at us. Payton loved watching the monkeys and she was thrilled to see the monkey in the garbage can since she still has a fascination with garbage and garbage cans. We continued our adventures and came across some amazing animals. We have never seen zoo animals so animated before. Payton loved watching the animals peeing and pooping. She even fed a Zebra. One of the big differences between the U.S. and here is that you are able to get so close to the animals. Literally we were 6 or less feet away from a Bengal tiger and a lion. Additionally, the lion pen was designed to protect animals from leaving, but not from people from entering or tossing different trash and animals in the pen. We also saw a mountain lion couple attempt to fornicate. The female lion was moaning/yelling very loud and Payton was a little uncomfortable and asking a lot of questions. I don’t think Jen and I are ready to start talking about reproduction yet, Jen attempted but Payton was confused.

We drove to the Argentina-Chile border yesterday. Snow is starting to accumulate on the mountains and on the roadside. We visited Punta del Inca (an abandoned hot springs resort on the side of a mountain overlooking the river 10 meters below). The yellow/orange colors of the structure are from the sulfur in the water. We also did a short hike to take some pictures of Cerro Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. I was supposed to climb this in December, however, that will not be happening now. We took the pictures of Aconcagua at an elevation over 10,000 feet. These mountains are big! We drove through Upsallata, where Brad Pitt’s film ‘Tibet’ was filmed because it was very similar to the picturesque terrain of India.

San Rafael

We reached San Rafael late at night. Stayed in an overpriced American style hotel/casino suite. If it weren’t for the lack of alcohol in my body, I would have went down to the Casino and gambled a little bit. Due to the price, we left that morning for another hotel. El Jardin reminds me of Melrose Place. (see above) I guess I’m dating myself now. If you’re not in your late twenties or thirties, you probably will have no idea what I’m talking about. Melrose Place was basically a teenager/young adult soap opera. Needless to say, this place has a little less amenities that the casino/hotel offered. But 1/3 price.

San Rafael is a bike friendly town. I haven’t seen this many people ride bikes since we left Chico. Aah CHICO!!! That brings back good memories…Maple and Popular lined streets make this a attractive town if your able to look pass the typical bars on the windows. However, I do find this city to have more attractive buildings than others. Per capita, it appears that the whole downtown and surrounding areas are older 1900 classic style Argentine building. Much more here and obvious than Buenos Aires.

There are 80 bodegas around here. We don’t plan on visiting all of them, but a few of them are within biking distance. We will buy a bike for Jen with a baby carrier. (I guess Payton isn’t a baby any longer, but like my parents tell me, I will always be there baby!) Some of these bodegas are still manually grinding the grapes!

There is tremendous investment potential down here, especially it terms of bodegas and real estate. It appears that North Americans are openly accepted here. There was an article in a new tourist pamphlet that intereviewed recent Oregonian’s, in their 60’s, who moved down here to retire and live. From the interview, it appears that they like San Rafael and plan to stay.

On our winery tour we met two guys from Seattle and three girls from McCall, Idaho. Really nice people. Instead of the tour, we talked for 30 minutes before the winery closed. It appears the guys, including myself, are in agreement that we would all stay here longer, however, the girls on agreement that they are homesick and miss a lot of the things we all take for granted back in the U.S. It was good for Jen to meet these girls, not only for emotional support, but someone else to confide into…Payton appears to be liking boys now. She kept on asking Jen what the boys names were. She appeared to be fascinated with them. I don’t know if I can handle Payton be curious about boys yet. She should be saying “Yuck!” I guess I will have to work on that. Number one goal! “Boys are Yucky!!!

Here is a photo of a passenger barge touring a reservoir near San Rafael. Look at the front of the boat. It was taking water the whole time. I was a little nervous for them!

Neuquen

Neuquen

It’s an ugly town. There really isn’t anything here, except the notoriety of being the business hub of northern Patagonia (Neuquen province). One thing that this town has going for it is the fact they have the largest carnivore and herbivore dinosaur remains in the world. We visited an actual current archeological dig site a few kilometers from town. It was very interesting and Payton was interested for the first 20 minutes before thinking the small rocks on the ground were more valuable and important than the dinosaur bones that were bigger than me in length. Oh well! We had a good time. In addition, almost the entire tour was in Spanish. We understood 30-40%. Which is huge for us! We visited a wonderful bodega after our paleontology tour, Schroeder Bodega. We had a 5 star lunch at the restaurant. It was by far the best food we have had so far in Argentina. The wine was very good as well.

Afterwards we spent 6 hours driving to San Rafael and ended up arriving in town late in the evening (9:00pm). We splurged for the suite at a nice and expensive hotel, only so we could get a room quickly in order to get Payton to bed. After parking, checking in and setting up the room it was 10:45 before her head hit the pillow. We decided to find a different hotel the next morning so we could get back on track with our budget. We found a cute place that looks like Melrose Place hotel…

Chile

We finally decided to leave for Chile. This time we rented a Volkswagon Gol. Not Golf, but Gol. It basically looks like a newer version of the Volkswagon Golf. Do they still make those in the U.S.? We had to downsize to two bags to fit into such a small vehicle. Most of you probably didn’t think that would be possible, but we did it.

Chileans are all about paperwork and they are very thorough. They double checked all of our documents, our luggage and our vehicle before allowing us to enter and leave the country. For a quick moment I felt like I was an incognito double agent attempting to steal vital information from Argentina and take the information over the border. My day dream quickly ended when I thought about the possibility of a cavity search…

We found Chili to be beautiful. We saw many waterfalls, an abundance of trees and lush greenery everywhere with a few volcano's (look hard at the pic top left) I didn’t realize how much of Chile's land is used for agriculture. We also found Chile to be very clean. We drove for a significant distance before seeing any trash on the side of the road and we actually viewed, what appeared to be, an entire classroom of children picking up trash on the side of the road. They had on latex gloves and were also wearing surgical masks. It was a little over kill with the masks, but hey, what a great idea to get the kids involved in cleaning up the environment!

The first town on our list to see in Chile was the small town of Frutillar. After arriving at the town we decided that it must only be open during the summer because the town appeared closed. The information office was closed, the hotels we stopped at were closed and even the restaurants appeared to be empty. We decided to continue on and not spend anymore tine in this cute, but deserted town and head to the second town on our list. We drove a shprt distance to Puerto Octay, where Ryan and Laurie Ness stayed at the hostel Zapata Amarillo (Yellow Shoe). Ryan and Laurie wrote about this hostel in their blog and they recommended it highly. If a friend recommends a place, you have to check it out. We arrived at the Swiss family run hostel and found the setting to be beautiful and the owners to be very nice. Also, to our benefit, we were the only guests at that time so we had the place to ourselves, except of course for the owners and their two children who live in the house. The best thing about the hostel is that it is very environmentally conscious. Ten years ago they started construction on the main house, which has a grass roof. The owner, Nadia, stated that they received a lot of peculiar looks and questions when they first built the roof. The most exciting thing for me, was the fact that they recently completed an additional building which was built with straw insulation. According to Nadia this was the first time a straw house has been built in the region. I like this idea, due to the fact that if we ever build again I would like to do something like this in the U.S. Within the last few years in Bend, OR there have been a few of these homes being built. Nadia stated that due to the weather in the region, it was an experimental house for the next 3 years. As long as there is no mold or mice, they will build more…I think you could say that they live a carbon negative lifestyle.

We received great recommendations from Nadia about where to go after leaving Puerto Octay, she helped us plan the rest of our trip in Chile. We left Puerto Octay headed for Valdivia. I think it’s a struggling town trying to find an identity and at the same time deal with its growing population. We went to the local Brewery The beer was awesome and it was true Bavarian beer. However, it was not served in Bavarian style. Most importantly, there were no breasts on the verge of popping out from the confines of their blouse, nor liter sized glasses. Payton loved the brewery the most, they had a playhouse at the side of the building and she played there for over an hour. The food was good and HUGE!!!. We took a picture to prove it. The sandwich was 7 USD and I think this was the cheapest food we had in Chile. Chile is NOT inexpensive compared to Argentina. Why? I do not really know. From there we drove to a spanish fortress

Later that day we drove to a great secluded and quiet beach town called Mehuin. Initially upon entering this cove we were a little
leery of the hotel we may be staying in. However, the Swiss/German/Chilean owner, world-renowned Skat player (bridge), had a wonderful hotel/restaurant. This was the only hotel in town. We walked on the beach and picked up sea shells till dusk and started looking for more first thing the next morning.

We left Mehuin for Pucon. The drive was uneventful except for the many tolls we had to pay on the way. We entered Pucon hopeful and excited. We drove to a few 3 & 4 star hotels and quickly decided that Argentina has better quality hotels for the price and their condition. We ended up staying at the Villarica Park Lake Hotel. A five star hotel right on the Lake. The General Manager, Mr. Fleming (forgot his first name) is an Australian who has been in Chile for 9 years. Very nice and friendly gentlemen who made our stay very enjoyable. This hotel is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY US. It truly has five star amenities at 3-4 star prices, by US standards at $190USD/night. Very expensive for us, but worth every penny, especially to our surprise when they had an American buffet breakfast. I think Jen and I gained a few pounds. Payton loved having bacon everyday. Pic to the right is at the indoor pool, they made us wear these shower caps for sanitary reasons. I climbed Volcano Villarica and once again, not big on the tours, but I didn’t have crampons nor an axe and I was told that a guide was necessary. So I payed the money and sucked it up and went with a guide. My group reached the base of the Volcano, which is also a ski resort during the winter, and we were quickly informed that we could save an hour of the hike if we take the ski lift up for an additional 10USD. Not surprised here. A few of us (including three other Americans) decided to save the 10 USD and walk. It wasn’t an additional hour, it was 30-40 minutes. I think the 21 year old Americans were surprised when I started talking about our trip and experiences. Needless to say, they pooped out and I left them and continued on for the top of the ski lift. I was 20-30 minutes ahead of them, the guide at the top of the lift stated I could continue ahead on my own and catch up to the other group 20 minutes ahead of me if I wanted. HELL YEAH! I reached them in 10 minutes and started the slow turtlish pace up the mountain. After 20 minutes of climbing with the group I decided to check my pulse. 85 bpm. Do you think this is sub aerobic…Another reason not to be with a group. Worst of all, my IPOD battery was dead (even though I charged it the day before) and the camera was acting up.

A couple hundred yards from the top a few of the girls were having difficulty, the guide said I could go ahead by myself. Thank god! I reached the top in no time at all. The winds were BLOWING! The winds were well over 100mph. I ran for cover before being blown into the opening of the volcano. Luckily, the weight I have gained during this trip finally paid off. It's like my body knew to get fat, so the wind wouldn’t blow me away. –side bar- You think I’m joking. A Brazilian who was 6'5” and probably weighed 220 was told he could not climb to the summit by his guide due to the danger with the strong wind gusts. The group I had started the climb with showed up approximately 20 minutes later, I met up with them and we had to join arms and like a train we went down the mountain. The best part of the trip was the glissading down the mountain and running on the skree. A drink after the climb...

We stayed and played in Pucon for a few days. We found a few restuarnats and Art stores that were beautiful.

After spending a week in Chile and spending American equivalent dollars, we were happy to get back to Argentina. We stayed one night in St. Martin de los Andes, Argentina. It’s a really pretty town, quiet, with many things to do in the periphery. However, it rained the whole time we were there and it was supposed to rain for the next week. Therefore, we stayed the night and left the next morning for Neuquen. Our only reason for staying in Neuquen was to break up the long drive to San Rafael which was a 10 hour drive from San Martin. Way too long for us in a car.

I almost forgot our amazing hot springs outside Pucon. This place was amazing! There were 17 different pools with varying temps. We had a great time. Payton enjoyed the cooler pools. She didn't want to leave. After 3 hrs we decided that was enough. I think Payton is enjoying the finer things in life...