Mendoza Madness

After our exciting time in El Calafate we headed north (on a nightmare of a bus journey). On the very first bus we stopped for half an hour when a girl in her late twenties was taken off the bus in the middle of nowhere and arrested by the police. They searched her bags and gave her a thorough frisking before slapping on the cuffs right in front of everybody on the bus.

We then had a four hour wait in the depressing town of Rio Gallegos where we had stayed a few days earlier on the way to El Calafate, there wasn´t much to do so we headed to an internet cafe for a few hours. Back on the bus and it was the bus from hell literally as the heat was unbearable, I couldn´t put my feet on the floor as I would have been burnt to a crisp.

To split the journey we decided to stop off on the way in a place called Puerto Madryn. This place has a wildlife sanctuary near to it with sea lions, elephant seals, and for a couple of months orca (whales) are sometimes seen.

The prices for the tours seemed a bit steep and we were also told by one company that there was likely to be a strike the next day which would stop all tours going out. So we decided to skip the tours because we might not see anything and just stayed one night before heading onto Mendoza.

Another long bus journey later with the second half being another nightmare we ended up in Mendoza and found our hostel a couple of minutes from the bus station.

We went for a little wander about and were told of a good place to go for dinner....well as we hadn´t eaten anything other than bread rolls & ham for 24 hours we decided to give it ago. If you are ever in Mendoza visit Las Tinajas on Lavalle. We weren´t too sure as it was a buffet (bad experience in Montevideo) but when we walked by at 10.30pm it was jumping. The food was excellent and there was something for everyone,and on our second visit on the Sunday night they had a great Tijuana Brass band. Everything was extremely fresh and the variety did not stop at Argentinian food...there was individual chefs making you up stir frys, pasta, you name it they had it....With a bottle of red wine we had a ball and again rolled home stuffed to the gunnels.

On Friday we decided to head towards a park and walked through the city. When I say walked it was more of a skip and jump from Reilly ´junior´ as he stomped his way along trying to crunch every fallen leaf in sight (and there were quite a few of them). We sat by the lake and then headed up a hill towards a view point....well there was a neat statue celebrating the Argentinian independece there but you couldn´t see the city and the mountains looked like someone had painted them in the background. We headed back down the hill and through the park singing along to our music as we set up our MP3 and speakers on the back of Chris´ backpack, we did get some funny looks from passers by (not sure if it was my singing or Chris´s).

On Saturday we met up with a couple of Americans...Cath and Dave who were going to go to the wineries...well since we aren´t that fond of wine we declined............ to stay in the city and took up their offer of going with them. First stop was Museum La Rural which is also a modern day winery....After the tour we tasted some wine...well since the grapes were young this wine was sold to religious groups (need I say anymore!!). This was the wine we got to taste and it was a little acidic....we then decided on another bottle to share between us....that was much nicer.

Off to find the second winery which was a little disappointing....more folk had come in and we weren´t able to do the tour....but we had a couple of sips of aged wine. We then got a bus back which detoured all around Mendoza.

On Sunday we tried to find the Antiques market but we never did so we headed back to the park, had lunch by the lake and lazed about in the warm sunshine. I was then cajolled and persuaded by my said husband to try and find a way into a football stadium which had something to do with some guy called Archie something or other who scored a goal for Scotland against some other team during the Argentinian World Cup in nineteen canteen. There was no security (in sight) so we had to climb a few fences and barbed wire to get in, once inside it was just a big empty stadium with rugby posts instead of football goals. Chris tried to get down on to the pitch but there was a big moat around it, he kept going on about it being probably the most famous Scottish goal ever. We managed to get back out before we got arrested or anybody shooting at us.

Mendoza is a whole lot cheaper than Chile and the south of Argentina, most days we had a luch for the two of us for about a 1 pound and dinner was always under a tenner (sometimes under a fiver) and that would include at least a bottle of wine.