Chocolate milk

Whilst in Mendoza, we did some pretty awesome activities. The BF and I signed up for white water rafting and zip lining which is also known as canopy here. Id not done either so was excited albeit a little scared at the same time...not that I let this on to the BF. 


Wed chosen to go with a company called Argentina Rafting which Id been recommended by some other travelers Id met whilst in Bariloche. The staff were great and the equipment was well maintained  which made a change form the shoddy gear wed been given when I climbed Pucón volcano!


The rafting happened to be first up, so we were given wetsuits, booties, life jackets and a helmet each - such a good look by the way...

Team Latin America

Once we were briefed they drove us all about twenty minutes up the road to where the  rafting began on the Potrerillos river which runs through Mendoza and according to the BF looks like chocolate milk! (a result of all the sediment in the river)


We were put into teams of six people and set off downstream, with BF at the front with another guy with me, the rest of the crew and the instructor behind. The rapids we encountered were pretty hefty (level 3) and had random names such as Suegra which means mother in law in Spanish! The rafting wasn't as terrifying as I was expecting - more exhilarating, especially each time we finished a rapid we all had to scream our contentment : D

Off we go...

First rapid we hit!

fighting our way through...

Elation at having done it!

Off we go again...

Next up was the zip lining (canopy) which involved flying through the air across canyons and rivers attached to a cable.  The noise omitted from the pulley on the cable as you zoomed across resembled a formula 1 racing car which we all found amusing as it only added to the thrill of the ride! 

Jenson Button A.K.A. the BF

Unfortunately, or should I said typically, I got stuck half way across the last canopy which ran across the Potrerillos river. It was a fairly wide river and there was a bit of wind that day so there I was swaying looking down at the river which looked a mile away from me. Bizarrely I didn't panic, rather I just admired the view and waited patiently as one of the instructors winched himself towards me from the other side. In true Latin American man style, he asked me "do you come here often", obviously thinking it would make me laugh and calm my nerves. Thankfully I didn't need calming down but I did welcome his humour.

Off I go on the final canopy

Check out how high I am and the width of the river

STRANDED!

"do you come here often?"

BF decides to go backwards...

The next day we just chilled out and ate lunch at an all you can eat parilla. It was basically a
massive dining room with a buffet (ham and cheese in making its way into most of the dishes available) accompanied by a stand alone kitchenette which was manned by a greasy looking chef cooking up pastas and pancakes (separately of course!). I opted for a pancake with banana and dulche de leche ( thick, creamy, caramel-like milk-based sauce - again ignoring the lactose intolerance...) flambéed in alcohol. It was goooood : D


We then visited the Plaza de España in Mendoza which was decked out in typical Spanish mosaics - pretty! En route back to the hostel we passed by the most beautiful bank I've ever laid eyes on! (I cant vouch for their service though...)

hypnotizing!

This building reminds me of another in Barcelona but I cant remember which...if any of you know then please say!

Dinner was at a Mexican restaurant which served up delicious fajitas and the most ginourmous margarita's. I got a little drunk much to the amusement of the BF.

slurpy slurpy

The following day we signed ourselves up for some more activities - I know who would have thought I turn into such a adrenalin junkie?! we chose to stick with the same company (Argentina rafting) and elected to do some rock climbing / abseiling and some horse riding. 

Wed both done some rock climbing before (the BF having taught it when he was younger) so we knew what to expect. Luckily for us, we were the only people in the group so we had the instructor, Aga - Argentina´s number 2 climber - all to ourselves! She was great and helped us to navigate some tricky climbs which I certainly initially freaked out. Towards the end I was like Marvel comics Black Widow super heroine scaling the walls at top speed : D

Even the instructor trusted the BF with the ropes. What a  pro!

Give us a wave!

Giving Jean Claude Van Dam a run for his money in the splits stakes!

I look like Im walking up! haha

Horse riding was good,  the scenery was straight out of a spaghetti western and the weather whilst it being a little overcast meant a welcome break from the heat. The BF had never ridden before (with the exception of a camel) but he quickly mastered it, although his horse did have a penchant for peeing a lot which we all found amusing.

Our instructor of very few words

He is a natural!

Taking it all in my stride : D

Trekking in the Wild West

We got the horses to canter and go up and downhill more than on the previous horse riding I had down in Bariloche which was fun but meant that I was a little saddle sore the next day.


Being in Mendoza, it was obligatory that we did a wine tour of the region. I had been recommended a company called Ampora (I love going by recommendation by the way so if you have any about the rest of South America, namely Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia then leave me a message on my blog!).


Ampora focuses on showing you the "hidden gems" of the Mendoza region explaining the wine making process and only does tours with up to eight people so it is much more intimate.


We started early at 9am and visited a total of four vineyards and tasted seventeen large glasses of wine. Yes that's right people, seventeen. All before our gourmet lunch at the fourth vineyard. Needless to say I couldn't finish all the glasses, but the BF and the rest of the tour gave it a good shot.

First vineyard of the day

The BF goes in for his first glass - straight from the tank!

Second vineyard we visited. I stopped taking photos of the others . I blame the vino.

The vats of wine we climbed up on top of...

...to taste the wine!

wine tasting

The winner! it was the last wine on the right. Alas they don't sell it in the UK : (

That evening, we said "hasta lluego" to Mendoza and caught a bus to San Luis which is a small town four hours north of Mendoza. The bus this time was even better than the last, with fully recline-able leather seats, TV screens in the back of the seat heads and giant head phones. Given the amount of wine wed drunk that day, the excitement of the bus was a little too much for us both too handle. Feeling drowsy I slept pretty much the entire journey whilst the BF was in his element watching Fast and the Furious and eating food which contained yet more ham and cheese - you cant seem to escape the stuff!


Arriving at San Luis, I still wasn't feeling too good, and after a bit of a will I? wont I? moment during our taxi ride to the hostel, I proceeded to throw up most of the wine Id consumed the minute I stepped outside the taxi and in front of the hostel. Nice. Not the most proudest moments of my life but the BF certainly coped very well with it all. Thank goodness!


We didn't stay too long in San Luis as to be honest there isn't very much there. Even the locals were asking us why we had visited?! Although I will say this, San Luis has its own share of rather interesting looking shoe shops and sells some amusing things in the local supermarket...

Shoes? tick. Shop called Maria? tick. My mamá  would be in heaven : D

I wonder if Mr Clooney realizes he is in the window of a mens shoe shop in Argentina...?

No idea what this cut of meat is, but it looks straight out of the Flintstones!

Next stop, Cordoba!

Gambling on some Malbec ice cream

Firstly, can I just apologise for the tardiness in these blog entries, the entry Im about to write - in fact this goes for pretty much most of the past few blogs - have been written days and sometimes a week (s) after the actual occurrence. You see, travelling it would seem is quite a full time business. What with getting from place to place, meeting people and visiting sights, there really is little time for admin days. Not that Im grumbling. No way. I wouldnt have it any other way. Its just I had hoped to have kept you all a little more up to date with current events. I hope you forgive me ;-p


Anyway, enough dwelling on things, on with this entry...


The BF and I didnt spend too long in Santiago, Chile as you really only need a couple of days there, so off we set to our next destination, Mendoza. 


Mendoza is situated roughly seven hours east of Santiago in Argentina. In order to get there you have to cross the worlds longest mountain range, The Andes. These range of highlands  run along the western coast of South America. The road to in between Santiago and Mendoza which runs through these highlands is called the Trans Andean highway which we had been told was stunning and had to be crossed during the day so the view could be admired in all its glory. 

One of the views we saw...there were many but they can be tricky to capture when on a moving bus!

So off we went on the bus (a nice one thankfully albeit with one rank warm ham and cheese sandwich each for breakfast and lunch) admiring the view of the road which looks like a giant Scalextrix track snaking its way up the mountain. Being sat in the top deck of the bus was great in that it gave us great vistas of the journey, however, it also meant that each time the bus turned a corner you had to take a breath as all you could see was a sheer drop!

Id like to see this road appear on Top Gear...

The BF thought the Andes looked like the mountain peaks in Wales but on steroids. I guess that is one way to describe them as they were pretty mighty...


As we were crossing from Chile into Argentina, we had to stop at the border to have our passports checked. The border crossing was literally a giant warehouse with loads of vehicles piled in to go through the same process - which incidently takes forever and they then make the bus wait an hour on the other side but dont tell anyone why?

Lots of people wanting to cross the border...

Only the best : D

Taking pics to fill up time whilst we waited for the bus to move on - check out the altitude!

We finally arrived in Mendoza where it was absolutely boiling hot - almost 40 degree heat!


Arriving at the hostel, the only room they had available for us as a couple was a twin room with bunk beds. Cue mattresses on the floor again. We did have our own bathroom though which was like a wet room as the shower was attached to the wall inbetween the toilet and the sink. We both found weird pleasure in using the mop which was like a giant windscreen wiper to wipe all the excess water off the floor...


That evening the BF had his first of Argentinian steak and a glass of his favourite wine, Malbec which is the most famous wine of the region. The steak whilst good, unfortunately wasn't great but that didn't matter as there were to be many more steaks eaten throughout his visit. 


On our first day in Mendoza, we really didnt do very much apart from walk around the neighbourhood to familiarise ourselves and visit the big park that there is in the north of the city. Wed both been looking forward to visiting the park, especially the Museum of Natural Sciences which housed Egyptian mummies and taxidermy. However the museum turned out to be closed for refurbishment (a running theme Im finding!) and most of the park was a little unkempt. There were some nice parts by the lake although we had been warned not to venture too far north as it became a bit dodgy. 

This part of the park reminded me of Cuba!

Pretty ornate fountain in the park

Upon leaving the park we arrived at an ice cream parlour and couldnt resist popping in. They had every flavour of ice cream imaginable, including a vanilla and malbec one. The BF decided this had to be tried so he ordered a cone full. Now, either the icecream was off or malbec really should not be made into an ice cream, either way it tasted disgusting. 

Not amused...

Given I have a lactose intolerence I ought not to eat ice cream as it doesnt agree with me, however the pistachio flavour looked too tempting so I succumbed and had some. I wish I hadn't. It tasted like washing up liquid :(


With both of us feeling deflated by our horrible ice creams, we decided we had to find an alternative so we went to the other parlour across the road. Thankfully their tiramisu and mint choc chip ice creams were delicious. My stomach unfortunately did not agree...


We stopped via a park on the way home and the BF decided to work off his ice cream by climbing on the climbing frame, the result was hilarious...

Step one

Step two 

Step three

In the evening we met up for dinner with some of my Pachamamarites who were also in Mendoza. It was great to catch up with them both and excitingly for the BF we ate the most delicious steak yet at the restaurant we went to!


Afterwards the BF and I swung by the local casino on the way home. You may recall in earlier blogs how pretty much every touristic town I've visited in South America has its own casino. These casinos tend to be the most elaborate and largest buildings in the whole town. We therefore felt obliged to contribute towards these money taking mausoleums : D


Im not overly familiar with casinos, with the exception of having visited a few whilst at uni (one of my house mates was quite the gambler) and having the worst aptitude for card games I left it to the BF to navigate us around the tables there. We started playing blackjack which we did quite well at, although being gamblers (I discovered I am one also - I blame my abuelo!) we pretty much lost everything we had won. No biggie though as we had ensured we were playing with very low amounts of money. The next table was roulette which we didn't win a thing at and I didn't like so much as it was just chance the whole time, whereas with blackjack you can at least think you have some idea of the cards if you pay close attention and have a photographic memory!

Santiago, Chile!

Having completed the Pachamama tour we returned to Santiago, the capital of Chile where 
Id arrived a week earlier with my Dutch travel buddy Lucienne. Wed explored a little of 
the city then, but not much, as Lucienne only had one day left and she wanted some 
serious tan time by the pool. 


We caught the rather efficient and new looking metro (Barcelona or Paris metro systems 
spring to mine) into the centre of town and walked as far as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) which was free to get in and had some interesting exhibits. Neither of us understood most of them, especially the one which was was a statue of a woman lying down with a swan giving her oral sex?! We didn't bother trying to interpret that one...

No pics of the aforementioned offending piece of art, just a view of the museum inside...

The weather was stifling and as we were both exhausted from having lugged our backpacks 
from the bus terminal earlier that day we returned to our gringo hostel in Barrio Brazil to relax. 


Given it was Lucienne´s last night of travelling we wanted to give her a good send off so 
we decided to go out. Having showered and put our faces on (amazing what mascara does to the eyes after not wearing any for a while) we were ready to go. We enquired at the 
hostel reception as to where was good to go in Santiago on a Sunday and the response we 
got was pretty surprising: "No one goes out partying on a Sunday in Santiago" No, Im not 
lying. That was the actual response we got. It did make sense though. We hadn't seen 
hardly anyone around that day. Given we weren't going to waste our made up faces we ended up drinking in the hostel bar in the garden. Disappointing Santiago, disappointing.


Having returned to Santiago with my new found Pachamama buddies, I was ademant I was 
going to have a good night out in this city. We ended up in a local bar called Voodoo (it 
even had a giant voodoo doll outside) where happy hour was in full swing. Given there was 
about twelve of us, it was understandable that some of the drinks orders would get confusing, however, our barman was utterly useless. Not only did he bring the wrong drinks, he brought them a different times as he kept "forgetting" (code word for incompetent) 


Finally we all had our drinks. It was then that we started to rememenise about our 
Pachamama adventures. One thing that kept raising its head, as it were, was the incident 
where one of our fellow Pachamamarites, Amy, had been shat on by a seagull. This event 
unfolded on one of the days before I joined the tour. It transpired that as a result of 
said shatting, Amy, or one of the other Pachamamarites came up with the saying "Shaton 
par Seagull" said in a French accent. This saying then evolved into a designer lifestyle 
brand with all of us posing in pictures with our arms shaped like seagulls personifying 
le brand. I guess you had to be there to fully appreciate this all, but it did make us 
all chuckle. 

The party continued back at the hostel bar where a rather competitive game of doubles 
ping pong pursued in the garden - inevitable when alcohol is involved. Id like to point 
out that whilst Im no Forrest Gump when it comes to playing ping pong, I am still pretty good so Ill happily have a game with anyone who would like to challenge me. :D


Unfortunately the next day everyone had to go their seperate ways, some onto the southern trip of the Pachamama tour, others back to their home countries. I therefore decided to move hostels to see another part of the city. 


One of my travel buddies who Id met in Argentina had recommended a hostel in Providencia (metro stop Buqueano) which had only been open for six weeks. I took her advice and checked in. It was like staying in someones house. Literally, as it only had a few rooms and it was a detached house on a residential street. I was given a room all to myself 
(single bed and a bunk bed - lucky me!) and immediately settled in. The owner was a 
Californian Surfer who was a bit of a character to say the least. His Chilean girlfriend 
was on vacation so it was him and his other Californian buddy running the hostel. Think 
Bill and Ted from the late 80´s film Bill and Teds excellent adventure and you get my drift. 


They were both lovely but I got the impression it was the Chilean girlfriend that ran the 
show, and given she wasn't there, everything was pretty chilled out on the service front.

pretty residential road where the Surfer hostel was

As Id only spent a little time in Santiago I decided to do a free walking tour around the city. The guides just ask that you tip them whatever you feel like at the end. Or not as the case may be. It was really interesting, albeit very hot, walking around and being told the history of the city´s political past. 

Not sure why there is a riot van in this pic?

Some political graffiti

The presidential palace where the former president Salvador Allende killed himself

This pic made me smile

Afterwards I treated myself to a shopping spree at the enormous shopping mall in the north of the city. Given that my North face anorak had been stolen on one my previous bus journeys I felt I deserved a new one :D Surprisingly I discovered a concession of Topshop in one of the department stores there?! The clothes were all last season though...

Toppers!

The next day I decided to explore the area local to my hostel and discovered a cute barrio called Italia which excitingly had a Über cool looking hairdressers called Berlin. It had been almost three months since Id tended to my tresses so I was in desperate need of a trim. I went in and fell in love with the décor of the salon. Given I love the city Berlin, the name wasn't bad either. The salon was a mismatch of antique furniture, paintings of horses and a bit of taxidermy thrown in for good measure. Somehow I managed to tear myself away from the fashion magazines lying on the coffee table and speak to the receptionist to arrange a cut and colour. 


Id like to take this opportunity now to say that throughout my life I have rather 
shamefully always judged a book by its cover. With the exception of during my job I might 
add. That is one area I have managed not to let this trait ever stray into. Rather it 
tends to be places. I've done it alot during my travels, sometimes I have been right 
(Osono in Chile you are guilty) about my impressions and other times Ive been wrong 
(Buenos Aires Im sorry...) 


Anyway, my point is that you should never judge a hairdressers salon by its decor. Ever.


Given my desire to have long hair a la every South American woman, I was growing my hair 
and went into the salon only wanting a trim. I came out with a femullet. Thats female 
mullet for those not in the know.


There are no words to describe my anger / upset. None. The stylist literally attacked my 
hair with a razor blade, thats right, NOT scissors. Before I had a chance to tell her that
razoring my hair is disastrous (Ive experienced it once before and my hair and razors do 
not a good pairing make) she had lopped off half my hair in a feathering frenzy.


All this the day before I was meant to meet my BF who was flying into see me. Joy. 


To make matters worse, Id asked Bill and Ted back at the hostel a few days earlier to reserve a double room for the BF and I, however they had mucked up and not made the reservation and it had gone to some "other couple"?!


I was not a happy mulleted bunny.


Thankfully the minute the BF arrived through the arrivals doors at Santiago Airport and spotted my home made sign with his name on, all my woes dissapeared. It was soo good to see a familiar face again after travelling for so long!


The room mishap also didnt put a dampener on things, as thankfully there were no other travellers booked into my three bed room so we just put the matresses on the floor and made our own double bed : D Little did we know that this would prove to be a running theme for the rest of his trip, but more of that later...


That afternoon we walked to the Cerro San Cristóbal which is a hill in Santiago which offers panoramic views of the city - smog permitting...

View of the Cerro from street level 

We caught the funicular up to the top of the hill and marvelled at the views which were amazingly smog free. There we walked up further to visit the huge statue of the Virgen de la Immaculada Concepción but unfortunately she is undergoing a facelift currently so she was covered in scaffolding. I´ll have to make do with having just seeing Mr JC in Rio instead.

Going up...

View from the top

Going down...

From the top of the hill you could see the construction of The Gran Torre which is soon to be the tallest building in South America. Im sure they are earthquake proofing it but I still  wouldn't want to be at the top when there is one...

Big boy building

That evening we ate at a Peruvian restaurant around the corner from the hostel. I had been told about the Peruvians culinary prowess by fellow travellers however given that neither I nor the BF had ever eaten food from there we were a little apprehensive...I kept thinking of guinea pig for some reason...or is that Bolivia?! Either way we were both pleasantly surprised and the food was a delicious medley of seafood all washed down with a Peruvian Pisco sour - I had to have the BF try one!


All in all Santiago is an interesting place, its not the most beautiful city either of us has been to, nor does it have as much charm as the other South American cities I've visited. But randomly it does have its own version of London´s BT Tower!

Santiago clearly doesn't have the same concerns over falling satellite dishes as BT...