Mendoza, Argentina

With all due respect to Patagonia and all its beauty, Amy says she feels like we have finally arrived in South America. The streets are dirty and colorful, and the bus terminal is full of indigenous people and their babies. It's also much cheaper here, and the Internet is super fast so we can finally download our pictures!!

Mendoza is a mid-sized city, best known for its wineries, so we toured a couple.... The biggest, ¨Lopez,¨and the smallest (a family-run winery), ¨Cavas de Don Arturo,¨that's been around for over 100 years. The first was very industrial...

the grapes´ worst nightmare:


we felt like Laverne and Shirley:


but the second winery was very pretty with vineyards and piles of purple grapes ready to be squashed.





We also toured an olive oil factory and its groves of olive trees. We learned that extra virgin is the best olive oil because it has the lowest acidity....


and that green olives are the same as black olives; they just aren't as ripe.




The streets in Menoza are full of boutiques and nice restaurants, and the sidewalks are wide and vary from bricks to tiles.


Also, there are irrigation canals (3-4 feet deep), along the curbs that we could have easily fallen into so we learned quickly to watch our step. We were told the canals carry glacier water from the streams to the city´s parks and vineyards since Mendoza only gets rain about 5 days per year. You would never know it by looking at this green city.

The best part about Mendoza were the tree-lined streets, plazas and parks. The trees were so big and so many that they completely shaded the streets like tall, leafy canopies.


They even have a large city park that resembles Central Park in NYC--complete with a lake, fountains, statues, cafes and lovely running trails. It was enough to make Pascale homesick. We ate at a cafe, took a nap by the lake and each did some running on the trails. Parque San Martin was only four blocks from our hostel and so beautiful.

Hanging out by the lake....


The next day, taking a walk in the park...


We heard that Mendoza is actually quite a large city, but the outskirts are not nearly as nice or safe. We were only downtown so we were lucky to only see the best of it for the five days we were there.

Plaza Independencia at night:



This was our corner grocer (pet store/taxidermist):



We liked our hostel because it was spacious and had a pool & garden patio where we ate breakfast. The only drawback was that we never slept because everyone partied on the patio until 3 am, the staff included. To make sleep more impossible, our room was right next door to the bathroom they used all night long . To be fair, ¨management¨added this sign:



More pics: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8QcN2TFq0bM5U&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5