Mendoza, Argentina
gonna make these ones short and add pictures when i can
so i went on that city tour the first day, then met up with lisa and tricia and lisa´s friend cecilia at the bus terminal...
after our first night in the HI hostel, we moved over to Andino Hostel, which had a lot more travellors and was run by other travellors...people who had been passing through and then just stayed. nice place, though it would have made the unbearable heat in mendoza (which is actually in the middle of a dessert) bearable if the pool hadn´t been a murky puddle in the backyard. it was right next to a bunch of trees and a dj with turn tables, so that made up for it. now if only the argentine population could work on their audio aesthetics...
paragliding the second day...this is where they take you to the top of a mountain the size of grouse (3,700 meters), or thrice the size of blue mountain, on what amounts to a goat path in the back of a rickety old ford pickup. you pass cactus and thorn bushes, then finally get to the top, where they strap you to a man that flies the sail and throw you off the mountain. if the conditions are right, you fly upwards on thermals then descend kilometers away where the pilot´s wife is waiting to drive you back into town. i dunno...it may have just been the day´s conditions, or the particular pilot i got, but i didn´t think it was so thrilling...more like a leisurely glide down to the ground. sure, it was high, but not particularly fast or anything...
on the third day we went on a vineyards tour...which was cool. three different vineyards and one distillery; they taught us how wine and spirits are made, and gave us plenty of opportunity to sample them. then when we were all famished, they took us to this quaint old house and sat us down at a table that was absolutely COVERED in food. too much food. but oh-so-good.
fourth day we went on a tour that went up into the mountains...saw this 'inca bridge' which turned out to be massively disappointing. i was hoping to see ancient architecture, and all we saw was an abandoned hotel from the turn of the century. sure, the natural bridge made by mineral deposits was cool, but i wasn´t there to see a natural wonder, i wanted to see really old stuff! not a place where an inca may or may not have crossed thousands of years ago. but anyways, the aconcagua was pretty impressive, apparently you can get up to the top on the north face without needing hardcore ice picks and such...so sean? what´d´ya think, wanna get to the top of the highest mountain in the andes one day? takes under a month...
then that night we took the red eye bus to cordoba. and got a shower out of the deal, as the bus leaked when it started to rain, and there really weren´t any seats that were safe from the constant drip.
Word of the Day: tepid
posted by sr @ 21:03
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