Simon and I met up at the bus station, and hiked in the heat to our hostel. Unlike the hostel I stayed at the first time, this place, though very nice on the inside, was situated outside of the centre, in a sketchy area seemingly popular with Mendoza's ladies of the night. After a couple of games of foosball with the 5 year-old son of the hostel owners (who, sizing me up as easy Canadian prey, was QUITE disappointed I kicked his Argentine ass...), we went out for some beef and wine downtown.
The next day was something like 40 degrees. Too hot for wandering around town. Too hot for biking in the mountains. So we caught a lift with a guy associated with our hostel the Termas de Cacheuta, up in the mountains. Seriously the crappiest car ever (the dashboard was missing...), driven in typical insane Argentine fashion at breakneck speed up the winding mountain road. As many Argentine cars run on a dual system of gasoline and natural gas, we stopped for a natural gas fill up on the way. At a natural gas station, everyone has to get out of the car as it's filled, as a safety precaution. ( So I guess if the car blows up you'll be standing oh-so-safely 1 foot away, instead of in it.)
The termas were a complex of several pools of thermal mountains waters, of varying temperatures. Lots of families, though the desert plants and the overtowering mountains kept it from feeling too much like a water park. So we soaked our bones and soaked up the sun, and I actually saw someone whiter than me for once, which made me happy. Afterwards, we dried off and had a maté as the families filed out of the complex.
We narrowly missed getting stranded in the small mountain village housing the termas as we jumped onto a bus back to Mendoza as it was pulling away.
Back in town, we stopped for supper at the Automovil Club Argentina (their version of CAA.) Yes, they have a restaurant. An unlikely spot, you say? They had a wicked terrasse on the street, sweet food deals, and the place was full of happy, well-fed, if older, people.
Check out Simon's gallery of pics from the Termas.
Saturday we decided on a trip up to the Andes. I dare you to visit Mendoza, it's skyline overtaken my the Andes' impending presence, and not feel the urge to get a bit closer. The guy that ran our hostel let us in on a secret; instead of shelling out 150 pesos for a guided group excursion up into mountains, there was a bus that left every morning from the bus terminal for 15 pesos. The two main attractions, Parque de Aconcagua and Puente del Inca, were a walkable 4km apart, and the bus returned to Mendoza in the evening. Argentines pride themselves on not necessarily cheating the system, but definitely milking it, and I was more than happy to continue my habit of undermining the tourism industry by putting together a DIY excursion.
The bus left at 7am sharp and began the winding 4 hour ascent to the top of the Andes, right to the Chilean border. The higher we climbed the narrower and twistier the roads got, snaking through progressively smaller towns and villages as our ears popped with altitude. Frequent stops slowed the trip down. Though watching people load, and then unload further down the road, loads of firewood, fresh bread, and that day's newspaper, you realized that the tourists were among the least pressing cargo on the bus that acted as a important means of transport between remote communities.
We jumped off the bus at the side of the road at the entrance to Aconcagua Provincial Park. Named after the tallest peak in the Andes (almost 7000m!), the reserve is very popular among hikers, as well as the mountaineers that come attempting to scale peak. There was not a cloud in the electric blue sky, and the sun beat down on us as we did a short day hike though the park. Unlike the Andes farther south, where forests abound, here there was not a tree to be found and the day was hot! We gazed off in the distance at the snowy peak of Aconcagua (which v
ery few climbers have been able to access this year, as it is unseasonably snowier than usual...)Once hiking time was over, we started the descent along the side of the serpentine mountain road to Puente del Inca. This road being the main throroughfare for truckers hauling their wares from Buenos Aires to Santiago, as well as all international busses and car traffic, it wasn't quite the idyllic hike we'd had inside the park. Despite the incredible 360 degree mountain scenery. We spotted a trail ( that later turned out to be used by horseback riders) that followed an old set of railroad tracks, and abandoned the paved shoulder.
Puente del Inca is this funky phenomenon. First, it's a natural stone bridge over a rushing river. Basically the river carved a hole in the rock, so you have a bridge over the water, but it's the same piece of rock making up the bridge, and the cliffs on either side. Then there's a hotel and spa complex built on the side of the cliffs in the 1940's, that was later washed out in a flood, and now lays abandoned. But contributing to a constantly changing and evolving rock landscape is the high sulphur content in the river water, which, builds up and erodes surrounding rock faces with bright yellow mineral deposits. Besides the bridge there is a small village, consisting of a hostel, a couple of restaurants and a bunch of souvenir shops. The place is a major tourist attraction, despite the fact that due to erosion visitors can no longer cross the Puente, they can only take pictures from afar. Which is what we did, and then retired to the terrasse of a small snack bar for some nourishment, and to wait for the bus back to Mendoza.
Simon's shots of our day in the Alta Montaña.
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