A Weekend in the Mountains - day 1

To escape the 90F heat in Mendoza, we decided to head for the mountains this weekend. We found a rental car, a hotel room and on Saturday at 12:30pm we headed northwest. Our first stop was Villavencio, source of most of the bottled mineral water sold in Mendoza. The park office gave us each a free bottle of water and we got to see a guanaco (like a llama) up close in an enclosure. Villavencio is also the name of an elegant abandoned hotel that once had thermal baths of the mineral waters. The current rumor is that the Dannon company is interested in re-opening the hotel. We had a picnic lunch among the trees planted above the hotel then wandered around the extensively landscaped grounds. From Villavencio we followed the dirt "Road of a Year", named for its 365 bends, up to 9,400 feet and down to Uspallata. I was extremely thankful that traffic was light and that Jake was driving! The view from the heights was incredible though. We saw a couple condors, one very close. There's also a new memorial to Darwin!

In Uspallata we checked in to the Valle Andina hotel, an okay hotel with a great pool. After a refreshing dip we went to watch the sun set behind the snow capped mountains. We watched the sunset from what may have been a Jesuit silver smelting site, built in the 1600s. There seems to be some debate about the purpose of the odd egg-shaped structures. It grew dark quickly so we went back into town. There is basically one main street with a few hostels, grocery stores, clothing stores, and a bar. The bar is named Tibet, but it was named before "7 years in Tibet" was filmed in the area. The bar overlooks Rt. 7, the main road from Santiago, Chile to Argentina. It was a fascinatingly busy intersection with bikers coming back from a day on the road, trucks of all types stopping at the local gas station, and locals and tourists from all over the world wandering around on foot and bicycle. At the bar we heard (besides Spanish), French, German and English being spoken. We stopped there to postpone eating to a semi-reasonable hour. Our dinner destination was the parrillada next to the gas station where a sign announcing "Chivito Hoy!", attracted Jake's attention. Chivito is young goat, an Argentine specialty. We wandered over around 9 pm and got a salad, an order of chivito and an order of ribs for me. And french fries to share. The chivito and ribs were brought to our table on a small sizzling barbecue. They were extremely tasty as were the thick cut fries.

We headed back to our hotel after dinner hoping to get an early start the next morning. If we were to go to Uspallata again we would try to stay at either Los Condores, right downtown, or at the Gran Hotel Uspallata, an old grand hotel just outside of town. Ours was okay, but the rooms were more like a hostel room in quality than a hotel room which given the price wasn't what we expected.