Mendoza parties

The city is getting ready for the giant Vendimia festival next weekend with a series of cultural events. Starting on Thursday at 8pm there were cultural events for 24 hours straight culminating last night in the crowning of the Vendimia queen for the city. Now all the Vendimia queens from each region of Mendoza have been crowned and one will be chosen next Saturday to be the Queen of Vendimia. Jake is rooting for Paula from Las Heras (when asked what vegetable she would be, she said a tomato because it is ripe and juicy), I think I might root for the queen from Tupungato, location of my favorite wine so far this trip. Vendimia is the wine festival.

On Thursday we watched a comedic play called "Superheroes of the city" about a plumber who could fix anything, a woman who could turn air into gas, and a curandera (like a witch who gives potions to fix broken hearts etc.). We then strolled along the Alameda where there were outdoor sculptures, street artists, crafts, and several stages for music. We walked up to the end where there was supposed to be tango, but they weren't dancing yet, so we walked a few blocks back to a Mexican restaurant for some dinner. The food was actually reasonably authentic and had a truly hot sauce!

On Friday we started at 9pm with the "Megadegustacion de Vinos", the giant wine tasting. For 20 pesos you get a glass and tickets for 8 wine samples. There were probably 50 vineyards there with all kinds of wine. There were long tents set up in a park area between the lanes of Belgrano street where the train used to run. There were 2 tickets for premium wines, so I tried a very good Los Haroldos 2006 Malbec and a 15 year old wine from Norton vineyards that was a little past its prime. Still, it is the oldest wine I've ever tried. The vintners would pour almost a full glass of wine, so after my 3rd glass I started just tasting rather than drinking the whole glass. The best varieties from Mendoza in my opinion are malbecs, cabernet sauvignons and torrontes (a white wine). We ran across several fellow students including Sindra, the Norwegian who had been in my class, and 2 Australian women from northwestern Australia.

From the wine tasting we went to the Extravaganza, at a big stage set up in Plaza Independencia. All seats appeared to be reserved, so we stood on the plaza where we had a decent view. Firt they introduced the 20 queen contestants announcing their eye and hair color and field of study. The extravaganza featured dancing and music, lights, occasional fireworks, some participation from the fountain in front of the stage, and props floating over the stage across wires. The general theme was Vendimia through history. It went on for about an hour and a half ending with a shower of golden confetti. After this, the queens were brought back on stage and the current city queen and vice-queen and Vendimia queen and vice queen were introduced. They then proceeded to announce the votes for each queen individually. As each vote was announced that queen would step forward to applause. The vote announcements went on and on until eventually it became clear that it was a close race between #11, from the Club de Regattas and #20, representing something like the transportation union. Finally, #11 was declared the winner, #20 the vice city queen and the queen was crowned by the former queen. People were still crowded around, so it was clear this was not the end of the show. Sure enough, patriotic music and fireworks followed for another 20 minutes. Jake and I were extremely tired of standing by this point, but we did stay for the fireworks.

Note from the photo that even McDonalds serves wine during Vendimia!

Birthday Flight

To add a little adventure to my birthday celebration, we went paragliding! There were 5 of us from the language school and another eight people from hostels and other parts. You can see some of us sitting around the base camp just outside of Mendoza while the first group went out. We had to wait about 2 hours for the first group so we chatted with the others and I wandered around taking photos of native Mendozan vegetation. Finally, it was our turn. We rode in the back of a big jeep up a very narrow, winding road to the top of Cerro Arco (see aerial view - mountain with all the antennas on it). Once at the top the pilots quickly unfurled their paragliders and suited us up in a sling like thing. Each person rides with a pilot. They then attached themselves in their slings to us. One at a time, waiting for a light wind, you walk forward downhill, the pilot lifts the sail, you run a few steps and suddenly you are off the ground suspended in mid-air!

The sling was quite comfortable, like a chair, and you can hold onto straps or keep your arms free. I held on with one hand at all times and with the other hand managed my camera. The camera is tied onto the harness with a cord. We drifted quite high above the mountain and hung suspended there drifting very slowly. The pilot could turn the glider in circles for a 360 view. You can opt to try acrobatics, but as I was somewhat dizzy as soon as we took off I chose the slow, gentle flight and watched while another pair did loops in the sky. Things happened so fast I wasn't sure what color Jake's glider was, so it wasn't until he was one of the last to land that I could spot him again.

I think the photos will speak to the beauty of the scenery especially as the sun set.

After everyone had landed and all the gear had been packed up, we piled into a pickup truck for the trip back to town. After cleaning up, we went out for dinner to a Spanish restaurant we had discovered a few days ago just a block away. It has an amusingly old Spanish atmosphere. You are greeted with a glass of sherry and the wings of the small restaurant are named things like Salon of the Shields. Jake ordered a garlic soup that was heavenly. Floating in the rich broth were many crunchy pieces of bread fried in olive oil. We shared a plate of hams and cheese and for main courses Jake had sea bass with a parsley butter sauce and I had chicken with sherry sauce. Neither of the main dishes were exceptional, but they were pretty good. For background music we had an enthusiastic piano player playing show tunes.

Here is the bus station in Bariloche with its luxury buses. After a nice lunch just outside of town at a restaurant overlooking the lake (Sol de Nahuel, creative and very good food!), and a little time at a public beach to relax we caught our bus back to Mendoza. Joining us in the first class cabin were 2 students from Middlebury College touring before spending a semester in Chile. The bus ride was as expected long and uneventful. We got to see the movies Lucky Number Slevin and Iron Man and thankfully fell asleep during the third movie! I will say a nice touch of first class is that they serve a glass of champagne before bed.

Lazing around Lake Lacar

I woke up on Friday feeling somewhat ill, but hoping it would clear up we went off for a drive to the end of Lago Lacar, the lake San Martin de los Andes is on, and to its connecting lake, Lago Nonthué. The dirt road was pretty decent and we made good time to the park ranger station at Hua Hum, only a few kilometers from the Chilean border. The park office is in a beautifully restored wooden building that was built in the early 1900s by a South African settler. The longer trail to another lake with hot springs had been closed off because they were searching for missing hikers. We never did hear what happened, but were content to explore other trails. We did a short hike to Cascada Chachin, a waterfall at the end of an interpretive trail. The trees along the trail were mostly different species of southern beech, Nothofagus and a few Saxegothaea, a tree that looks like a hemlock, but that has flowers. There was a pretty holly-like shrub with tubular red flowers as well (see photo).

After admiring the waterfall, we walked back to the road we had driven in on and down the road to the inlet of the lake. I was feeling somewhat worse at this point, so we sat by the lake and Jake had his lunch and I took a nap. We did find some ripe blackberries as a post-lunch snack (see photo)! Deciding that it was better to feel ill outdoors rather than stuck in a hotel room, we drove back along the lake and stopped at a campground further along the lake. Another nap did some good and we set off for home. After a few kilometers we stopped to pick up hitchhiking backpackers. Hector and Victor, two brothers from Buenos Aires, had camped at the furthest campground but had missed the only bus back to town. Despite being squeezed into the back of the car with their enormous packs, they were very grateful to get a ride. They invited us to visit them at the Hard Rock café in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires where they work. They are both students, one studying art and the other cinema.

I think that the bird pictured here is the tawny throated dotterel. We have seen a lot of birds, but my id skills aren't so great and the only book I have with me is a 43 page field guide to Patagonia and Antartica that includes plants and animals. I know we saw crested caracaras sitting on fenceposts along Rt. 40, upland geese on the lawn of the Llao-Llao resort and a ringed kingfisher at one of the lakes. I think there were 2 other types of caracaras as well that were fairly common, and maybe a type of phalarope along the lake shores. There was also a pair of ducks that I thought were mallards crossed with a domestic duck, but I don't think they have mallards down here.

Monkey Puzzle Trees

We woke up a cool, rainy day on Thursday, so we decided to hang around town in the morning. We toured the Founder’s Museum, a very small museum that featured an exhibit on early pottery of the area. We had lunch at one of the many parillas in town, this one featuring its half lambs grilling in the window of the restaurant. I had the house special of grilled lamb which came as a one piece of ribs and another thin piece maybe from the back. Jake had “Pollo fruta del bosque”, a beautiful and delicious chicken dish with a berry sauce.

By afternoon we were ready for some adventure and went off to hunt down Araucaria trees. I had nearly ended up studying Araucaria genetics for my dissertation, but had never seen them growing in the wild. The southernmost Araucaria were located 2 lakes north of us down another long dirt road. We headed off through rangelands and hills to Lake Curruhue, another long glacial lake surrounded by steep hills. Eventually, up on a hillside I spotted a few Araucaria! Jake found a spot to pull over and we scrambled up the hill to see them. They weren’t very old trees – the old trees grow very tall and lose their lower branches to form an umbrella-like canopy. But it was great fun to see them up close in their natural habitat. The hillside was covered in flowers of many colors. In the photo are orange Alistroemeria aurantiaca and daisy-shaped light purple Mutisia retusa, a vine.

We drove from the lake back to another town, Junin de los Andes, a poorer and smaller version of San Martin de los Andes, but still a nice little town and it would be a good town for expeditions to Volcan Lanin and the northern sections of Lanin National Park. It was only about a half hour drive back to San Martin from Junin.

A day on the slopes

We decided on an easy excursion our first day in town. We headed up to the ski area of Cerro Chapelco, about 15 km from town. Actually, first we had to stop at a hardware store to buy a piece of rope to tie the trunk of the car shut with since the lock had gotten stuck the day before. There are all kinds of activities on the mountain from zip lines through the trees to toboganning to mini golf and paintball. We took a aerosilla (an enclosed chair lift) up to 1600 m where most of the activities were and where there is a cafeteria style restaurant. This was not one of our better lunches, but it did have a nice view! We then walked along the roads and paths that wind up the mountain stopping to admire the flowers (on my part) and the ski lifts (on Jake’s part). Above the treeline were little mini natural rock gardens that would be the envy of any gardener!

On returning to our car, we discovered we had left the lights on again, so the ski employees jumpstarted us with a huge pickup truck that had 2 batteries. As our good deed we gave another guy who was working on a construction project up there whose truck had died a ride back into town.

In the evening we made up for our forgettable lunch with dinner at La Boqueria, a little tapas and wine bar in town. The tapas were excellent. We had a little dish of chicken curry, assorted mushrooms sautéed in garlic, and a bruschetta with tomato, prosciutto-style ham and thin slices of cheese. They have the best wine-by-the-glass selection of any place too! You can choose to have a glass of wine from any bottle they sell that is under 40 pesos. Most places will only serve the house wine by the glass. Of course they charge 20 pesos for the glass, but if you’re in the mood for choosing your wine and not drinking too much, it’s worth it. I wanted to try a local wine, so I had a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Neuquen region produced by the Fin Del Mundo vineyard. It was not a great wine, but it was quite nice.

One Man's Birthday Lunch

This man greatly enjoyed his birthday lunch of smoked wild boar, locatteli, and bread and a siesta on shores of Lago Espejo Chico in a rather remote part of the Argentine Andes with Chile just over the mountains. The sun was just warm enough for a good snooze, the lake was beautiful, and it ran out an even more beautiful river. Terrific. We only had to drive 100 kilometers on a dirt road to get there. The road eventually went to San Martin de Los Andes, on a bigger lake surrounded by mountains. Naturally, a birthday dinner had to follow -- black raviolis stuffed with trout and goat cheese for me -- yummy!!! Couldn't find chocolate cake, but went back out at tea time the day after and found some gooood stuff! A fine, fine birthday.

Ruta de Los Siete Lagos

On Tuesday we drove from Bariloche to San Martin de los Andes, our home for the next few days. We took what is called the route of the seven lakes. A paved road runs along the northern edge of Lago Nahuel Huapi and then it becomes a dirt road headed north past a series of other lakes. There is a recent and ongoing road expansion project so the first part of the gravel road was quite good and surprisingly wide. The problem was that there seemed to be limited access to the lakes and some places where it seemed there had been access had been blocked by piles of construction dirt. Eventually though we took a road to Lago Espejo Chico. There is a privately run campground at the lake, so if you want to spend more than half and hour there you pay 7 pesos/person. But it was very pleasant and quiet and had restrooms, so we paid our money, found a shady spot to park the car and took our picnic lunch down to the beach. After lunch and a rest, we strolled down the beach to the outlet, a beautiful stream where fly fisherman were trying their luck or just hanging out. There are campsites there as well.

From there we continued on, stopping at a scenic overlook to see a waterfall (and for me to photograph some local flora - see Jake's photo of me ignoring the falls to photograph flowers!). We got to San Martin de los Andes around 5pm and settled into our room at the Hosteria La Masia (photo with monkey puzzle tree and roses). It is about 6 blocks from the water (see photo of waterfront) and just two blocks from the main shopping streets. San Martin could be in Switzerland with its architecture and roses lining the streets. It's a small town, but there are many shops and restaurants, all very nice. There is a ski/golf resort outside of town, so it is a tourist town year round.

For Jake's birthday dinner we went to Piscis, a restaurant with the usual Lake District fair. Jake had a delicious main course of black ravioli stuffed with trout and topped with sundried tomatos and a green. I had beef tenderloin in a Malbec reduction sauce with a side of winter squash. We went on a search afterwards for chocolate cake, but were unsuccessful. The bakery/tea shops close earlier in the evening. We'll make up for the lack of birthday cake today I'm sure!

Llao Llao peninsula

On Monday we followed the popular Circuito Chico around the Llao Llao peninsula not far from Bariloche. There are many short footpaths along this route and pretty scenery. Our first walk was to see a small patch of Arrayan trees. Their cinnamon and white bark and twisting trunks create a magical looking forest. Most of the other forest trees are species of Nothofagus, related to beeches. Much of the forest has a dense understory of the local bamboo. The trail eventually led to a beach with a view of the Llao-Llao resort, a state owned hotel. We decided we would have lunch there to add to our experiences dining at hotels with great views (see Lake Louise hotel from May)!

Jake had a deer burger with blue cheese, bacon and tomato confit. I had a wonderfully light salmon and vegetable tart with a nice salad. We had a view back towards the beach where we had strolled not long before. Upon attempting to leave the hotel we discovered that the car battery had died. Fortunately, the hotel parking staff were very helpful and they used the hotel van to jump start our car. We drove about 10 minutes to the next walk we wanted to take, and took precautions to park the car on a downhill slope just in case the battery wasn't recharged! By now though the weather had turned blustery. The path went along an arm of the lake, but there was another path branching off that went uphill. Jake elected to follow that path, and we ended up on an exposed steep hill face, although with a nice view of the lake. We turned back in the face of the gale force winds and continued on to Colonia Suiza, a small village on a dirt road settled by the Swiss.

We decided to have tea and apple strudel at Heidi's, an incredibly cute place. Really all the buildings in Colonia Suiza are charming (see photo of entrance to a shop). Their electricity kept coming and going, but they were able to serve up a fine tea and pastry. Jake then bought me a teapot I had admired at another store in town as an early birthday present. Hope that makes it home in one piece!

We returned to Pajaro Azul after doing some grocery shopping for our trip on Tuesday to rest some before dinner. For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant in town. There seems to be a tortilla chip shortage down here. They served salsas with slices of bread! And you pay extra if you want corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas. The food was good though (enchiladas for me and a burrito for Jake).

Cerro Tronador and the Car Key

Tronador comes from the word for thunder, and the mountain has that name because of frequent avalanches from its glacier. We made our way to the base of Cerro Tronador today. The first half hour of the trip from Bariloche is along a pretty paved road that skirts the edge of a large lake. Then you turn right onto a dirt road, and the next 40 km is dirt. Most of the road is one way with the direction of travel changing in the afternoon. This is a good thing, because it is a narrow road with steep sides in many places, and there is a fair amount of traffic. The road winds along the edge of a couple more lakes, all with deep blue-green waters edged with steep wooded hillsides. In a few places there are gravel beaches where families camp or where hotels have been established. The lakes are also popular with fly fishermen. At the information office in Pampa Linda, an area with a camping area and hostel, our car key came apart with the metal part in the car door and the plastic part in Jake's hand. With some effort we managed to get back into the car and got the car started to head a few more km up the road to see the Ventisquera Negra glacier. On the way up, Jake backed the car downhill a few feet to let another car go over a steep section, and the car stalled. We figured the engine had flooded and Jake got it to start again after a couple minutes. We parked at the glacier overlook and admired the view. This lowest part of the glacier is black with dirt and dust and pieces float in a river of water white with glacial silt. Far above sits the bulk of the glacier with its bluish edge visible. Cascades of water fell down the mountain side from the melting water. Twice while we were in the park we heard the thunder of unseen avalanches.

Once done admiring the views, we attempted to start the car again, but no luck. We decided to walk the remaining kilometer to where there were a couple short hiking trails (and for backpackers the trail to a refuge higher up the mountain) and see if the car felt more cooperative later. The road goes through more forest, often with an understory of the native bamboo (see photo). At the trailhead is a snack bar that also serves what looked to be pretty good cakes and streudel, but we resisted. We took a short trail up to the base of a waterfall (see photo) and watched smaller waterfalls occasionally turn to mist when a wind blew through.

When we got back to the car it still wouldn't start despite our best efforts and innovative tool use (Jake tried a couple flat rocks for leverage on the key and then some helpful drivers provided various multi-use tools to try. Nothing worked though and a couple from Buenos Aires offered us a ride back to Bariloche in their old 10 passenger van (several benches had been removed from the center to provide storage space). They ended up giving another woman a ride too at the request of the police stationed at the beginning of the one way road. She had been staying at the refuge where her boyfriend teaches climbing.

The road back seemed long and very dusty, but it started raining about half way through. Unfortunately it was still raining when we got to town, and we got wet and cold the few blocks to the car rental place. We got a temporary replacement car which seems to be pretty rickety but got us back to our hosteria with its abundance of very hot water. Jake felt sorry for the car rental guy because he plans to go retrieve our original car tonight after 7 pm when the road is open two ways and bring it back to us fixed in the morning.

A Long Ride to Bariloche

On Friday night we boarded the AndesMar bus to Bariloche. This was our first experience with really long-distance buses (16 hours), but long bus rides are very common in Argentina and significantly cheaper than airplanes. We got first class bus tickets which put is in a section on the first floor of the bus with only 6 seats. The seats are extremely comfortable and they recline flat for sleeping. The only disadvantage is that they are exactly 6 feet long, just a little short for Jake. They feed you on the bus. First a hot chicken dinner and a plate of ham and cheese followed by a glass of champagne. Breakfast was skimpy but then around noon we were each served 2 ham and cheese sandwiches on crustless white bread and a cup of Fanta orange. Entertainment was provided in the form of 2 movies and an hour of 80s pop music videos at the end of the trip. We managed to mostly sleep through the night, and by morning we were in Neuquen, at the north end of the Lake district. The scenery got better and better as we neared Bariloche. At first it looked a lot like the drier parts of NM (see photo of a reservoir), but trees finally began appearing.

Once in Bariloche in our rental car we settled into our nice hosteria, Pajaro Azul, about 10 km from downtown. We drove back into town for a lunch of fresh grilled trout for me and goulash for Jake. Then we found the park information office and the Mamuschka chocolate store, supposedly one of Bariloche's best (and indeed, quite good! Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina). Note the photo of Jake sipping his $6 (US!) cup of tea with a Salomon store behind him. Is this the US or Argentina?! Bariloche is a very touristy, but pleasant, town located on Lago Nahuel Huapi.

We watched the sun set over the Lake with the stray dog of the evening. The dog jointed us on the rocky beach and then followed us back to our hosteria. It waited until we came back out to go to dinner, but was then politely chased away by some seemingly locally owned dogs. We had dinner at a nice pizza place between our place and town. As seems to be typical here, the restaurant is timber frame with golden beams and supporting posts.

An Evening in the MicroCenter

We spent an enjoyable evening in the middle of the middle of town, strolling, watching, eating. We spent some time in the used bookstores -- I was looking for a book with the translated title of "The Atrocity and Charm of Being Argentinian" recommended by one of my teachers. We then had coffee, around 7:30 p.m. of course, and strolled over to the main Plaza (Independencia) where there were lots of kids waiting around for these actors who are putting on their makeup in the foreground of the picture. It's not Broadway, but a start, I suppose. Mind you, these young kids on the playground equipement are all hanging around the park at 9:00 at night, when the show starts. We didn't hang out long because those shows tend to be loud and slapstickish (which must appeal to the kids, though a friend at school said she went to a (legitimate?) theater and that show was loud and slapstickish too). As it was approaching the dinner hour, 9:30 for us, 11 would be more appropriate for Argentines, we went to a restaurant that is a cut above other and dined until about 12:15, late in part because a couple of friends from school strolled by and joined us. All in all, a nice evening in the city. For me, the idea of sitting in a sidewalk cafe and having friends stroll by and join you for a drink is kind of a romantic notion. Back to the apartment by 1:00 a.m., early by local standards?

Food and Friends

On Saturday we rented a car to drive out to Maipu, a town just outside of Mendoza famous for its wine and olive production. Gordon, a fellow student here from Chicago, went with us. It took us awhile to find our way over to Maipu as road signs were lacking, but eventually we made our way first to the Wine Museum, part of Bodega Rural (a bodega is a winery). The wine museum holds a huge number of artifacts from the ox-skin sling used to crush grapes (small people would jump up and down on the skin that was filled with grapes, and the juice would run down to be collected in a hide bucket) to tools used for making barrels. The grapes pictured are Malbec. The guide spoke English and Spanish and seemed to be well-versed in wine-making. The tour lasted about 40 minutes followed by tasting one wine, a very young, not very good, Malbec.

Next we went to Bodega Familia diTomaso, one of the oldest wineries dating back to the 1860s. Here we had a tour with just one a few other people and the tour was more about how wines are and were made. In the old brick fermentation vats, they now store bottles and casks of wine to age. In the cellar, they showed how they keep a sample, or register, of bottles from each cask in each year in case there is ever a question about the purity of the wine. Interestingly we learned that the diTomaso wines are sold in the US, but under different labels. One of the wines marketed to the US had a bright red label which she said is meant to appeal to younger wine buyers for example. It makes it very difficult to return to the US and know that you are purchasing from a vineyard you visited though. At diTomaso we sampled four wines. One had been aged 6 months in bottles, the second 6 months in second-use oak casks, and the third was aged one year in first use oak casks. The fourth was a dessert wine from late-harvest grapes. There was quite a difference between the wines. The first had a very alcoholic smell to it and tasted high in alcohol. The second was much smoother even though it was the same age – the only difference was having been aged in oak. The third wine was more complex having been aged longer in new oak barrels. The dessert wine was actually quite good, like a sherry and not overly sweet. We talked some with another couple on the tour with us who live in Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina. Being wine lovers, they had driven up to Mendoza for vacation!

From the winery we went in search of an olive oil factory. We stopped at a small one where we discovered that there are varietal olive oils, just as there are wines. I think the elderly owner was managing the sampling table. We sampled 4 olive oils by eating pieces of bread that had been soaked in the oils. They were quite distinct. They also cured olives there and we tasted green, black and shriveled black olives. His son took us on a tour of the “factory”, basically 4 machines that are used to make the olive oil. The olives are cleaned and crushed then the pulp moves into a second machine where the pulp is essentially centrifuged to separate out the oil. The oil then goes into tanks where it settles and any water is drained off. The picture of the giant stones is of a machine that used to be used for crushing olives. After the tasting we were informed that the tasting would be 20 pesos/person unless we bought something worth more than that. We were already going to buy one bottle of olive oil, but we ended up buying a set which covered enough of the fee to get us all in “free”.

The olive oil tasting whetted our appetites for lunch. We tried another winery that listed food, but the setting wasn’t as nice so we returned to diTomasso’s lovely outdoor eating area instead. They were really busy during lunch, so we spent close to two hours enjoying lunch and a coffee with a view of the vineyards. I also enjoyed a fruity glass of the vineyards Torrontes white wine.

Instead of dessert, we went to Historias y Sabores, an artesanal, family run chocolate and liqueur place. They led us and another couple through a brief description of how they make their products followed by a tasting of chocolates, and your choice of one liqueur and 3 jams/jellies/savory spreads. The liqueur samples were generous and quite good. Gordon got a dulce de leche liqueur, Jake a chocolate banana liqueur, and I stuck with the grape theme by trying their grappa. We actually bought a bottle of the chocolate banana liqueur, which despite the perhaps unappealing sound of it, tasted refreshing and chocolaty. The chocolates were unfortunately not particularly notable. The jams and savory spreads on the other hand tasted quite good. We thought we would try to go to one other larger, more modern winery, but it was further away than we though, and we headed back to downtown.

In the evening, family friend Hugo picked us up. He and his wife Haydee had returned from visiting the US recently and this was the first time we had met them. They were very warm and welcoming. Hugo took us on a brief tour to see a modern glass and steel church noted for its architecture and to point out where he and his wife work before heading to his house a few minutes outside of downtown. We met his three kids and a few other assorted friends and relatives and their friendly dog over empanadas in the back yard under a full moon. A delightful evening!

Where Machines Go to Die and Yuppies Drink Coffee

Finally, one of us got back to the gym after three weeks on the road. This place is pretty beat up, though not the worst gym I looked at. Has a nice friendly welcoming look, doesn't! Like everyone else in Mendoza, the people are very friendly, so it is working out fine. It has cracked linoleum floors and peeling paint (where there is any paint at all). The machines are so old that they are held together with climbing rope. It truly is where gym equipment goes to die. But, it works.
By contrast, our barrio coffee shop is as yuppified as a Starbucks. (That's me looking supercilious (wired after a double espresso?).) The place has really good pastries. Every coffee shop has a "special" of a coffee and two "fracturas," which might be small (very sweet) croisant-type thingees,but at the Caffe Latte are much higher end -- and delicious. I never thought I'd develop a habit of drinking an espresso at 8:00 p.m. It doesn't affect my sleep because we frequently get to bed after midnight.

Water and Cleanliness in Mendoza

Mendoza would be a desert if it were not for the Acequias that carry water from the Rio Mendoza to downtown to water the parks and tree-lined streets. An acequia is a small canal and the water flow is controlled with manual sluice gates. At various times of the week, different acequias in Mendoza have water in them. It must be a complex task to figure which ones have water for when and for how long.

The city is also addicted to cleanliness, although apparently the current level of cleanliness is nothing like it was a few years ago. There are people out sweeping the sidewalks in front of their businesses at all hours, and municipal workers sweep the parks with homemade brooms and palm fronds. The street sweepers circulate frequently as well. Apparently this cleanliness habit dates back to when Mendoza strove, and succeeded, in winning the "Cleanest City in South America" award.

Emilio Fader

While Jake was working hard on an extra phonetics class in the afternoon, I went with two other students to the Emilio Fader museum in a suburb of Mendoza. Fader was a famous Argentine impressionist painter and he museum is a patron's house where he had painted murals on the walls. The patron donated the house to the state as a museum, and most of the murals were covered over in plaster so that Fader's paintings could be hung (go figure). My favorite room was the indoor pool where the murals were preserved. From inside the pool the paintings on the surrounding walls give the impression of being in the middle of a lake surrounded by storks, romanesque women and water. Some of the paintings were quite good and they showed how the artist's style changed over his lifetime.

An odd collection of sculptures resided on the porches on the side and back of the museum. Most had won prizes at Vendimia competitions (Vendimia is the giant festival of wine in March). The gardens were run down, but hinted at formal grandeur and featured roman style sculptures.

There are new students this week, including a man from Georgia who has sold his home and car and retired to travel and hike the Appalachian trail.