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.