Mendoza

Mendoza, home of many wineries and the base for the high Andes. It's still early spring here, so we decided to focus on the wine :)

As usual, our first day in town was spent wandering around, checking out cafés and ice cream. In most cities in Argentina the street signs are a mini history lesson. Streets are named for important dates, events and people. Virtually all Argentine cities have the same street names and many have the same intersections. This can be confusing when you move around a lot!



The above streets are named for the date of a relatively peaceful revolution, and San Martín's army in the fight to free South America from Spain.



And, of course, Avenida San Martín. Every town has at least one street named for El Libertador, and generally several. Mendoza has (at least) 3 streets and a plaza named for him. Also a museum, which we thought need a new curator but has lots of potential... The items on display are interesting, but the display is a bit haphazard.

Most cities in Argentina are laid out in a simple grid pattern, but Mendoza is the only one we've seen so far that gives references to the grid on their signs. Streets are numbered in reference to the original center of town. Av San Martín is (of course) one of the reference points.

Our last full day in Mendoza was a wine, olive oil, and liquere factory tour. We were a bit apprehensive at first, since we were the only gringos, but we mostly followed the tour guide's spanish, and at most locations there was either a bilingual tour or a private english tour for us. Sometimes it's good to be the odd ones out :)

We were befriended by a pair of Argentine couples on their honeymoons and had a great time chatting in slightly drunken Spanglish with them.



After the wine tour we discovered a vegetarian "tenedor libre" buffet restaurant, which had been open for a grand total of 9 days. We had a great meal and chatted with most of the staff, who are dedicated to improving the health of Argentinians one vegetable at a time. It's at 2 north and and 1 east if you're hungry and in Mendoza.

Salta province

After the tropical heat of the Iguazu area we travelled to the Salta province after yet another epic bus ride. Salta is the main city and it was our favorite so far. The usual city layout centered around a gorgeous plaza lined with cafes was visited more than once in Megan´s continuing and everlasting quest for the perfect cafe experience!!! The best thing about coffee in Argentina, other than the fact that it´s normally quite exceptional espresso, is the fact that it usually comes with a plate of little yummy pastries and mineral water. Very civilized. However, although we´ve experienced many lovely cafe locales, the best actual coffee that we´ve had has been in a gas station on the side of the highway. Even the gas stations here have high-quality espresso machines with baristas!!!!



Salta and the Northwest region is a very different Argentina, it´s proximity to Bolivia and Incan history makes it feel much more similar to Peru than to other parts of the country. The landscape reminded us of Red Rocks or Zion National park, with valley after valley of multicoloured sandstone. As well as lots of different shades of red rock, we saw a cloud forest and salt flats in a 4x4 tour north of Salta City.



After Salta City we visited Cafayate, a small town south of Salta which is also a wine growing area, and went for a memorable (and kind of long) bike ride through the valley. After 50km our bums hurt and going for wine tastings while so dehydrated wasn´t as much fun as we expected! So instead we went for ice cream. In fact, we have conducted a quite thorough tasting of high-quality ice cream throughout Argentina. Many towns claim to have the best ice cream in Argentina so we´re making it a goal to try all of them. So far it seems to be Buenos Aires or Cafayate, but the survey continues!

Next stop: Mendoza

Argentina!

After our trek through the Lares valley in Peru, we sat down and checked out a map of South America and considered how far we wanted to go in the next few months. Then we booked a flight to Buenos Aires. In case you haven't looked at a map lately, let's just say that Argentina is big. Really big. We´re now in Salta, our fourth major stop in Argentina, and we've spent over 65 hours on busses already. Not that we're complaining, since the long-distance bus service here is incredible. "Coche Cama" (sleeper) is the most common travel type - every seat is like flying first-class. If only Canada had busses like this...

We mostly chilled out in city parks in Buenos Aires, but we did manage to stay up late enough to go for dinner at a fancy restaurant. Once. Dinner here starts around 10:00, but things don´t really get going until nearly midnight. The food was great, even though they kept calling Megan´s salmon "trout". Buenos Aires is a magnificent city, Megan compared many places to ones in Paris. And there is lots of coffee :)

After Buenos Aires we caught a short (10 hour) overnight bus to Córdoba, where we spent 2 days wandering the city and one night camping in Los Gigantes (The Giants) provincial park. We also did the pilgrimage to the house Che grew up in, in a small town south of Córdoba. Not the greatest museum in the world, but there were lots of samples of his writing, and it piqued both our interest in learning more about Che.

Next stop (23 hour bus ride) was Puerto Iguazu, home of one of the world's largest waterfalls. And some really cute Capuchin monkeys. We spent two full days in the park, the first on the established tourist walkways taking LOTS of pictures and the second on a slightly less-travelled path to a smaller falls and a little swimming hole. Amazingly, we had this to ourselves for over an hour, and left just as a massive school group arrived.


Dave having a gently-massaging shower

The second day was sunnier and we briefly considered walking out to the big falls to see them in bright sunlight (Dave wanted a picture with rainbows) but we were out of water and nearly out of camera batteries so we decided to head back to our hotel's pool instead. We were a bit disappointed that we'd seen neither toucans nor the troop of monkeys we'd read about, but we'd seen crocodiles and birds and lots of lizards, so we weren't too disappointed. The edge of the park walkways is "El Sendero Verde" (The Green Trail) and it meanders under a canopy of trees covered in vines and epiphites. Monkey Food :) We saw the whole troop snacking above the trail, generally hangong upside-down and looking back at us while they nibbled. Unfortunately, our camera battery was completely dead due to Dave's many attempts to photograph butterflies on the wing, so no monkey pics. Doh!

Puerto Iguazu is a friendly little town on the edge of a tropical jungle and we really enjoyed our stay there, despite the complete lack of edible vegetables. We were getting quite concerned that the only things that Argentines eat is meat, sugar and white bread. This is difficult when you don´t eat meat!!! But our hotel was awesome. For about $17 we had a pool, air conditioning and breakfast!!! And a litre of yummy dark beer was about $1. Yum. After a slight bout of bad veggie induced food poisoning we headed up to the Andean Northwest of Argentina, a mere 27 hour bus ride away. More details on this area in our next edition.


The right-hand edge of the main falls