I can't believe that it's already April. This past weekend was amazing. I headed down to Mendoza, which is the wine country of Argentina. After my two classes on Wednesday, which felt really long, I went home and packed. I got to the bus station, where I realized that I had printed off my confirmation, but not my ticket! So I had to get my ticket printed at the station. However, I managed to get onto my bus with minutes to spare and settled in for a fourteen hour bus ride. The ride wasn't too bad. They served us food, which was a milanesa (breaded beef) and a (surprise!) ham and cheese sandwich. After midnight, I fell asleep and successfully stayed in that state till we arrived at 9 the next morning.
We checked into our hostel, and then planned to go paragliding. I had never paraglided before, but I thought that it would really be a cool experience. I'm also a bit afraid of heights, but figured I would be able to overcome it to see Mendoza from a different perspective. So, we headed up one of the mountains that overlooked the city. Then, we signed waivers (which got me a little nervous) and waited to head up to the highest point of the mountain to jump. When I got up there I was still pretty worried, but after I was harnessed in the backpack with the parachute and instructor behind me, I finally relaxed and was able to run off the cliff! The view was extraordinary and I was able to take some pictures from the air!
That night, we went out for dinner at a really cool restaurant. It was a holiday in Argentina on that day, and in the plazas, there were lots of people holding some sort of festival. It seemed like a really fun, end-of-summer fair where lots of people came to just relax and enjoy the awesome weather.
The next morning, my friend and I decided to go on a guided hike up the mountains in the Andes. We took this van to a mountain about an hour and a half from our hotel. Twenty minutes after getting out of the van, I realized that my cell phone had slid out of my pocket when I was in the van and I had lost it. Bummer, but since there wasn't anything I could really do to get it back at that point, I decided to just enjoy the rest of the day.
Then we got to the trail. Hiking was quite a physical task. The way up wasn't too difficult, and we stopped many times to refill our water bottles and catch our breath. But, the way down was quite treacherous at points. I slid many times and was definitely in danger of falling a few times. But we all reached the top and bottom of the mountain without any real problems.
Finally, on Saturday, our last day in Mendoza, we set out for the wineries, aka the bodegas. After a short bus ride to Maipu, we rented bikes from a place called Mr. Hugo's. Then we followed the map that Mr. Hugo gave us to the wineries. The first place we went, was actually an olive oil bodega. We went for a free tour and tasting. Though I'm not a huge olive oil aficionado, the olive oil did taste delicious and it was cool to get all the info on how it was made.
Next, we headed off to a family-winery. The winery specialized, as did most of Mendoza, in making Malbec wine. For ten pesos, we attended a wine-tasting and tour. Though I have very little knowledge of wine, I could definitely tell which kinds I liked and which I wasn't a huge fan of.
Finally, we stopped at the chocolate factory. There were countless different options of combinations of chocolate and liquor. For another ten pesos, we participated in a tour and tasting. I chose the "Chocolate" option, a little boring, but I definitely wanted to see what the original flavor was like. Although the chocolate part of the drink seemed tasty, the taste of the liquor in the drink really diminished my liking of the drink itself. The factory also gave us pieces of real chocolate to eat and it was quite delicious.
After a free glass of wine from Mr. Hugo when we returned the bikes, we headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags and were back at the bus station for our 8:30 back to Buenos Aires. The bus ride went by very quickly and when I got back to Buenos Aires, I realized that the weather seemed cooler than when we had left, and as sad as I am that the summer is winding down, I'm certainly welcoming this drop in humidity.
No comments:
Post a Comment