El Kiwi en Sudamérica

Mendoza, part one

Well, Mendoza surely lived up to it's reputation- A few of our friends upped the place (and the Country, Argentina) real big... It was a pretty full on, action packed weekend so I won't even be able to scratch the surface (and because I'm too lazy to spend all that time)
We nearly didn't even make it to the Bus station to even start the trip, as James needed to get some paperwork that wasn't given to him to even leave the country (and we only found out about it being a problem about 3 hours before our bus left) so to make a long story short, he rushed of and got that, I finished his packing, and we met at the bus station- after an epic treck across town by me with all our gear, and his mad dash to the Policia International.
But we made it with time to spare, thank goodness. The bus trip was epic- 8 hours over the Andes, even though Mendoza is only 380 Kms away. But what a view, and a varied view as well. For some reason the terrain changes markedly when you cross the border. On the Chile side there's like all these cactuses and dry as. But on the Argy side it changes to more of a tussocky, grassy stuff I think was 'la pampa' where Gauchos rome with cows about to be made into brilliant cheap steaks (ahhh).
So, we eventually arrived at Mendoza, at around 10ish in the night- perfect for Argentina- so we quickly found a hotel, then went off to buy some legendary Arg. Steak. Even by this time the streets were still extremly busy with Old people, families with little kids, and young people wandering around, eating out... it was such a great vibe around the city. The tempreture was warm, the occupants of the city were as beautiful as we had been told (There's good looking people all over the world, but there the ratio was ridiculous) so we were two happy guys chilling at a restaraunt eating a divine steak that could feed a whole family (no joke, like plate size, folded so they could fit some chips). But all this 'good' food doesn't seem to affect the locals, one of the security guys at work says it because of all the local tea (mate- pronounced mar-te or something like that) that people imbibe.
After that great meal we set off for a night out in the town...
to be cont.
tune in for the rest of the trip details, and some photo's in the next edition (coming soon...)

posted by Nathan Sinclair @ 3:35 PM