Mendoza, Wine Country

Clint and Ashley blogging together again today...

We went on a big hotel/hostel hunt when we arrived to Mendoza after a 14-hour bus ride, visiting about 10 places that were either too full, too expensive, or didn`t have private rooms. Exhausted, we gave up and started walking to our ¨backup¨ hotel. Then Clint spotted the perfect hostel--it had a private room available for us, was very affordable, and was one block away from a great street in town. Hooray!

We took a day to explore the city and loved it. The weather was great and the city has very wide sidewalks filled with restaurant tables. It seems that people are always outside dining and drinking. All the streets are tree-lined and there are clean parks with fountains about every four blocks. Later, we learned the reason why this city is so spacious and green. A huge earthquake left Mendoza in ruins in 1861 and they rebuilt strategically, betting that there would be another earthquake in Mendoza`s future. So, the sidewalks are wide to keep falling rubble out of the streets and the parks are meant as refuges. Whatever the reason, though, it is a great city.


Then we did the famous bikes & wines tour through Mendoza`s wine country. We rented bicycles from a guy called ¨Mr. Hugo¨and rode a short 18km circuit with about six wineries along the way. Clint was very funny on this excursion. We had the best time on a terrace overlooking a vineyard at the first winery and we both loved the wine.


Then Clint quickly gulped down the wine at the second place. By the time we got to the third winery, he had to nap on a bench while I toured and tasted. He was so sleepy and pitiful, and I was ready to head back with him. But once we got back on the bikes he was all peppy again--so we carried on our merry way.



At the end of the day, we had toured four wineries, done a liquor tasting, and enjoyed a last glass of wine with Mr. Hugo.

Then we made the critical decision to take a bus to the town of Uspallata to go hiking and backpacking...

What`s New? Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires was interesting. Not our favorite part of the trip because of some uncontrollable circumstances, but we still had great experiences here.

The Good:

* BsAs is incredibly cheap compared to Patagonia. We got to live little pieces of the high-life on a backpacker`s budget in BsAs.

* We had date night at La Cabrera, one of the most recommended steak restaurants in Buenos Aires. They even gave us champagne while we waited for a table. It was fun to get a little dressed up and enjoy a fancy dinner.

* Our private apartment in Palermo gave us Clint & Ashley space again for a whole week. It was so luxurious to not share a kitchen, bathroom, or dining room with other backpackers or families. The apartment also had a private rooftop patio, which was fantastic on sunny days.

* We spent an evening with Complejo Tango. This tango show picked us up from our apartment, served us a bottle of wine and dessert, and gave us a brief tango class. For the actual show, we had a table right next to the stage so we were feet away from the high kicks, costumes, lifts, everything.

* Recoleta Cemetery was fascinating. Clint could not, for the life of him, figure out how a cemetery could possibly be on everyone`s top 10 lists of things to do in BsAs. But we both understood the moment we stepped foot inside. They say that it is cheaper to live your entire life extravagantly than to be buried in Recoleta Cemetery. It is like a small city of mausoleums, many of which look more like miniature cathedrals than burial sites.

* I had a couple of nice solo excursions to Ashley-ish places that would have caused Clint a bit of pain. My favorites were the Evita Museum (complete with many of her old dresses, shoes, and hats... man, that woman could dress) and the Belgrano craft market (where I had to practice serious self-control).

The Bad:

Clint got a nasty head-cold, it rained a lot, a few of the attractions I wanted to see on Ashley-excursions were closed for renovations, and we had to spend quite a bit of time dealing with travelocity over the next leg of our travels. Nothing huge, just small dampers on the visit.

The Ugly:

Buenos Aires has a few disenchanting features: piles of dog poop everywhere on the sidewalks, sidewalks in various stages of repair and disrepair (aside: Really, these sidewalks are landmines. I saw an old lady accidentally step in a giant pile of wet cement and ruin her old-lady shoe), intense smog, and some pretty bad hecklers (another aside: The only time we have felt threatened on this entire trip was in La Boca--a tourist trap in a poor part of BsAs. I can only explain the locals` reactions to us stepping off the bus in terms of a cartoon: their eyes started spinning slot-machine-style and landed squarely on two dollar-signs. They followed on our heels, whispering scam ideas to one another and trying to sell us beer, Maradona jerseys, photographs, anything until we got back on the bus to our apartment. We only got half-scammed into taking really cheesy photos with tango dancers.)

Now we are in Mendoza, resting after another long bus trip. We are thrilled to be here and to begin discovering the land of Argentine wine!

Parque Nacional los Glaciares

Our last two stops in Patagonia were El Calafate and El Chaltèn, both to visit the Parque Nacional los Glaciares. It was quite a schlep to get there--nearly to the end of the world--but well worth it.

El Calafate is a small-ish tourist town just outside the national park and near Glacier Perito Moreno. Out of 300 glaciers in the national park, Perito Moreno is one of two that are still advancing. There are tons of tour options, including a couple of ice treks, but we did the most low-key tour and saved our ice trek for El Chaltèn.

Perito Moreno was absolutely beautiful and I had never seen anything like it. The white of the glacier was shot-through with some of the most gorgous blue hues and the jagged ice formations at the front were 20 stories high. It is 5 km. wide and that put it into perspective for me--a 5-k race wide.

We had three hours on the balconies that overlook the front of the glacier and it only takes 45 minutes to walk the circuit, so Clint and I eventually took a coffee break at the snack bar. Afterwards, we went back for one last look and the balconies. All of a sudden, a chunk of ice the size of a 6-story building broke and crashed into the lake. An older Argentine couple was standing next to us and we all saw every second of it, even feeling the ground shake beneath us. After savoring the moment, the Argentine man turned to us and said, ¨¡Spectacular!¨ My thought exactly.

El Chaltèn is an even smaller town (with a year-round population of 500) that is actually in the national park. It is in a glacial valley at the base of Cerros Torre and Fitz Roy--two dramatic rock mountains that draw climbers from around the world.

We spent four days hiking all through the park, seeing stunning views as the clouds cleared from Fitz Roy in the afternoons.

One mirador about four hours into the park really took our breath away. It overlooked a small glacier, its glacial lake, and Fitz Roy. As exhausted as we were when we got back to our hostel that night, we knew that we had just been on one of the best hikes of our lives.

The next day we went on an ice trek that included 21 miles of hiking, a zip-line river crossing, walking on Glacier Torre with crampons, and doing a small ice climb. We did not get great views because the weather did not cooperate, but it didn`t matter because we were on such an adventure. Thank goodness for Clint, who took especially good care of me and reminded me to go as slowly as I wanted on the more dangerous parts of the trail.

A couple of days later, we left El Chaltèn for Buenos Aires, a city of 13 million. It has been interesting to go from a town without a single bank to a city with 48 barrios (neighborhoods). Oh, and how`s this for a small world? We met a nice couple our age in the tiny El Calafate airport--who live in Greenville, South Carolina. Then they had the seats directly behind us on the plane.

Hasta luego de Buenos Aires... we will write about our big-city experiences soon.

Top Five Argentine Food Groups

I must do a top five list in honor of my HippoFriends (a tradition inspired by the movie High Fidelity). Without further ado, the top five Argentine food groups:

1) Mayonaise (mayonesa): It is a table condiment, sometimes even over and above salt and pepper. There is an entire section for it at the grocery store. Our host family`s son ate it with every meal, even in his lentil soup. They serve it on burritos instead of sour cream at ¨Mexican restaurants.¨ Enough said.

2) Sweets (dulces): Sweets are on every corner, in every store. The preferred ways of piping sugar into the bloodstream are by way of chocolate, pastries, dulce de leche (a carmel spread), ice cream, and alfajores (a glorified moonpie that Argentines can`t imagine living without).

3) Ham & Cheese (jamon y queso): It`s hard to get away from ham & cheese here. There are ham & cheese pizzas, ham & cheese croissants (media lunas), ham & cheese toast, ham & cheese flavored crackers and potato chips, and, of course, ham & cheese sandwiches. In fact, you can`t get any other kind of sandwich without looking really hard. If you like turkey & cheese sandwiches, you´re plain ol`out of luck.

4) Steak (bife, lomo, asado): The steak in Argentina is famous around the world, and now I understand why. It is truly incredible and melts in your mouth, even at the dodgy-ist looking restaurants and bars. I think that one of the Argentine secrets to cooking the perfect steak is an amazing ¨chimichurri¨sauce, which they douse the steak in before, during, and after cooking it.

5) Potatoes (papas): Potatoes are the only commonly served vegetable around. Potatoes are fried, baked, mashed... prepared all the usual ways. But green veggies are nowhere to be found on restaurant menus.

Puerto Madryn

Ashley and I said goodbye to Bariloche and headed East across Argentina to the beach town of Puerto Madryn. We had no idea we would be there for the best time of year to see wildlife. And that seemed to be the theme of this city, Wildlife. We found a good hostel in town and dumped our bags after a 14 hour bus ride and then decided to take a walk on the beach. After a few minutes Ashley looked up and said ¨look, Flamingos¨ and sure enough those pink birds from the 80s were there on the beach. I was not used to seeing them without sunglasses and zig zag paterns on strech pants, but they do exist in real life.

After getting settled in town we booked a tour of Punto Tombo, a penguin colony visit that included a dolphin viewing excurison. The commodore dophins are the smallest and fastest in the world with a large white mark covering most of their body (the rest of the body is black). They loved to play with the boat and gave the crowd a good show. The dolphin came right up to the side of the boat and got close enough to blow water on our faces.

The penguin colony was a great experience. They are not scared of humans at all and we could get really close. The magellin peguins are really small and walk really funny. After seeing them swim it´s easy to tell they are built for water much more than for land. The colony hosts over a million penguins and couples return to the same nest to lay their eggs every year. It´s amazing they can remember the same nest in a massive landcape of nests. This particular peguin seemed to be pointing to his house for us.

The next adventure was to the Peninsula Valdez, which is a wildlife preserve and the breeding grounds of southern right whales. We were incredibly luckly because we were able to see whales all day and probably saw a total of 30 whales with their calves, all in all. Our tour was a lot of fun and certainly action packed. We rode about 15 minutes out of town and pulled over to beach to see a mother with her calf (the first photo). Later we borded a vessel into the bay and saw a ton of whales. Two main highlights were a rare white calf and an extremely close encounter that took our breath away. We happened to be on the right side of the boat at the right time and saw the enormous mammal start to rise right under us. The whale was so close that we could almost touch it. My heart raced and it was truly a once in a lifetime memory. We did not get great pictures because we were so captivated by these creatures and did not want to see it all through the camera lens.

Elephant seals are fat lazy animals that like to have sex. They don´t really do anything and look funny when they try to move. Not much else to say. The llama looking thing is a guanaca which is common in Patagonia.

In total we saw seals, dolphins, whales, flamingos, guancos, wild Patagonian hares, armadillos, and an ostrich-like bird in just 4 days. To cap it off we had beers at a beach bar on our last day and saw two more whales breaching in the near distance. Next was a 23 hour bus ride south to El Calafate for glacier trekking and jagged mountain hiking. More to come soon.

Clint`s Birthday & Goodbye to Bariloche

Clint`s birthday was 10/14 (a week ago today) and just before we left Bariloche. The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL so we rented bicycles and rode the Circuito Chico for 25 km--all around Lago Moreno.

This excursion held a couple of surprises. When we started the ride, a neighborhood dog came right along with us. Clint tried to send him home, but this dog was coming with us whether we wanted him to or not. He sprinted and raced us downhill, and patiently waited for us when we were going uphill. We got to an overlook about half-way through the ride and met a local man who was selling trinkets and drinks on the side of the road. He told us that this dog runs along with tourist cyclists on Circuito Chico every single day.

So we stopped and had a picnic on the lake with our new dogfriend (whom we named Zenith).

The second surprise came towards the end of the ride when we found a dinosaur "museum." Let me just tell you how excited Clint was to find a random dinosaur exhibit on his birthday. Zenith waited for us in the parking lot while we explored the dinosaurs, which happened to be more like giant dino. toys scattered around outside. Clint did his famous T-Rex... a lot.

That evening we watched Argentina beat Uruguay to qualify for the World Cup. The streets went wild after the game and it was a really fun sight. Most cars were honking and waving Argentine flags out the windows. Finally at the end of the jam-packed day, Mati came to our hostel and I made lasanga for our new friends. It was a great way to celebrate Clint`s 28th and a nice last hoorah in Bariloche.

We left a couple of days later and Mati and his friend, Lucas, met us at the bus station to say goodbye. It was bittersweet to leave our friends and such an incredible place... but we were thrilled to begin the next leg of our journey. On to Puerto Madryn!

We will post about our Puerto Madryn adventures soon, but are now departing on a 21-hr bus trip (YUCK) to El Calafate. Just a teaser: Puerto Madryn included dolphins, flamingos, guanacos, penguins, whales, elephant seals, and an armadillo.

Catch-Up

This past week has been pretty low-key. We`ve settled into life here in Bariloche: we have a favorite brew-pub, know where to go hiking, and have figured out our favorite living situation. So we moved back into the hostel yesterday to save a little money, allow me to cook more, and meet new friends. We plan to leave Bariloche on Thursday (a few days early) because we have decided to head SOUTH before north--and I´m thrilled. Northern Patagonia here in Bariloche is incredible, but I want to see the romanticized arctic Patagonia. I want to watch glaciers and see penguin colonies.

Here are some highlights from this week:

* I have to tell you about a hair phenomena here in Argentina: the mullet-dreds. That`s right, a mullet with dread-locks. Here is proof (which happens to be in our favorite happy hour brew-pub)










* We hiked to a ¨refugio¨(refuge cabin for hikers, which they have on most mountains around here) on Cerro Otto and the whole experience was a very pleasant surprise. The view was nice and we met the caretaker -- a wonderful guy who spoke slowly and said things like, "today is a beautiful day to be alive." The refugio itself was the original building for the first ski school in Patagonia. It smelled like the clubhouse at Tuckaseegee and felt like home. The photo above the mantel is the cool old mountain man (Mr. Meilling) who started the ski school in the 30`s. He dug his own grave near the refugio about four years before he died.






* Mati took us on another hike on Thursday and--I know I keep saying this--but the view was even more breathtaking than any of the others. There was nothing for hundreds of miles--just lakes and mountains. The only signs of civilization were a road to a refugio on a distant mountain and a boat leaving an isolated port. It felt like true Patagonia. Clint said, ït is so increadibly beautiful and so lonely at the same time.¨ It was nice to share the experience with Clint, who has dreamed of Patagonia for so long.