Mendoza

This weekend was Easter, as you probably know. In Chile, that means a 3 or 4 day weekend, and everyone leaves the city. Angie, Elizabeth and I headed to Mendoza, Argentina—a 6-8 hour bus ride away. Friday morning we took off on the most spectacular bus ride I have ever been on. We crossed the Andes on the windiest switchbacky road I have ever seen, over an 11,000 ft. pass, and got a good clear glimpse of Mt. Aconcagua, the highest peak in the western hemisphere at over 22,000 ft. It truly was stunning and reminded me sometimes of the Alps and sometimes of Colorado or Glacier and then like Utah when we crossed to the other side. Sadly we couldn’t get out of the bus and explore. When we arrived in Mendoza, we went straight to the hostel and attempted to check in. They had lost our reservation, and lucky for us the entire city of Mendoza was completely out of rooms. Hostelbookers.com had overbooked the hostel—and badly. Virtually everyone’s reservation was messed up in some way. People were sleeping on the couches in the lobby because Mendoza was full. We argued with the front desk in Spanish for a few minutes and then after a phone call, 3 beds miraculously appeared. The girls were ok, but in my room all of the beds were taken. The hostel man was certain that there was one available because the computer said so. However, that was obviously not the case. For some reason, there was an extra mattress in the room, so we laid it on the floor and I volunteered to take it (for free of course) if they gave me some sheets. They refused and told me to take one of the beds since there was most certainly one free. So I did, and I moved someone’s stuff off the bed. Sure enough, at 4am, the rightful owner of the bed came stumbling in. Luckily, he was probably drunk so he just passed out on the mattress. In the morning, I tried to explain the whole situation, but he really did not care at all.

The first night we were there, we tried got a feel for the city and went to eat. It seemed there were more foreigners in Mendoza than Argentines—it was extremely touristy. However, it was really fun and the city comes completely alive after 10pm. Street performers, venders, and live music fills the streets. It’s a great summery festive atmosphere. For food, we went to find some Parilla, which is a traditional Argentine giant pile of meat. We paid $8 for a salad, empanada, and all you can eat meat, which they brought to our table on a grill so it would stay warm. It was quite good, but I stayed away from the kidney and one other organy mystery meat.

The next day we explored Mendoza. The city oddly reminded me of Poland. Wide tree-lined streets filled with old Peugots gave it a strangely soviet feel. The city is in a near perfect grid, with a large central park and four perfectly spaced smaller plazas surrounding the city center. The food was good—better than Chile in my opinion and a bit cheaper as well. The service, however, was lacking and I realized Chileans are quite speedy when it comes to restaurants.

Our Saturday afternoon was devoted to a “Bikes and Wine” adventure. We made our way out to the countryside and rented some bikes to do a winery tour. The road was busier than I would have liked, and at times kind of dangerous, but it was nice to get out and bike. We hit up two wineries and ended up running in to virtually everyone who was staying at our hostel as well as three of our friends from Santiago! Debbie, Cameron and Emily were in Mendoza for the weekend doing the same thing we were. It’s not a huge city, so we knew we would run into them sometime. After another glass of wine, we all biked back to the rental place. On our way back, two guys on a motorbike reached out and grabbed Elizabeth’s bag, trying to rip it off her. They pulled hard and she wobbled and crashed right in the middle of this very busy road. I was horrified when she fell, thinking she was going to have a gruesome accident. Luckily, she went down and came out with just some cuts and bruises on her legs. She could have been seriously injured or even killed, had a car been coming. I was right behind her and saw the whole thing. The men sped away, thankfully not getting her purse. Two women immediately came to the rescue and called the police, who were very nice and took her back to the bike rental place. Of course, these thieves won’t be caught. People like that make me absolutely sick. It’s one thing to pickpocket someone on the metro, but this sort of crime is violent. You can’t yank someone’s purse off when they are riding a bike and not expect a bloody result. Anyway, Elizabeth was ok, just a bit shaken up. The bike place even had someone (I have no idea who it was) take us back to the hostel in his car. That night we met up with our friends who we ran into and went to a pretty bad Mexican place. Go to Argentina to eat piles of meat, not Mexican food. My carne burrito was actually more or less a piece of pizza, with a small meat filling. It was weird.

We had to leave Sunday morning at 7am, because that was only bus back to Santiago. Everything was going fine until we hit the border. Drug sniffing dogs caught a scent and the border police detained this poor British girl who was just traveling through. She spoke no Spanish and was completely terrified. They strip searched and humiliated her. It turns out the man she was sitting next to was trying to smuggle cocaine. He had it taped to his body in a little pouch. This caused a long delay, but eventually the man was let back on the bus! We thought he would surely be going to jail, but it turns out he only had enough for personal consumption, so he basically got let off with a fine and a court date sometime this week. Elizabeth yelled at him to apologize to the poor English girl, but he just kind of smirked. What an asshole. Who tries to smuggle drugs across a South American border by taping it to yourself?? What an idiot.
We did get back, and despite these three incidences, we really had a great time. Mendoza is beautiful and well worth a visit, as long as you wear your purse in the front, don’t use hostelbookers.com, and please, don’t try and smuggle cocaine.