Mendoza is in the heart of Argentina´s largest wine growing area. Its incredibly dry around here (200mm rain a year which is the equivalent to a damp Monday mornings worth in Cork) but the vineyards are all irrigated with water from the Andes which are pretty near here.
Its a really well laid out city (population of greater metropolitian are is around 900k) as the whole place was thrashed by an earthquake in 1861 so it was rebuilt with very wide streets, low buildings, plazas, parks and trees everywhere. Every street is lined with trees on both sides and some have an island down the middle as well plus all the plazas have beautiful big old trees and are really well equipped. It seems to keep the whole place feeling nice and cool despite the 30C days we`re having here (once again this is not supposed to be normal this time of year).
We arrived after 18 hours on a bus from San Martin de los Andes which was actually ok and we even got to see Aconocagua in the morning light on the way into town. Staying at a lovely hostel called Alamo which has good breakfasts, lovely spacious rooms, towels and good chill out areas including a garden. Been here 4 days now and haven`t really done anything except wander about the city. We did have good intentions of getting a bike yesterday but we ended up getting up late and having a long, lazy breakfast cos we got chatting to someone about Tassie so ended up just being too lazy to get the hour long bus out to the wineries. We did manage to walk to the central park on sunday (as everything else was closed) and it was hilarious - everyone in the city seems to go there for the day, grannies, families, kids, couples, cool guys hooning and showing off their old, citroens, ford falcons, chevys, fiats etc. It was jammers and there was hardly a spare blade of grass to park our lazy butts. Also the siesta from 1pm to 5pm is strictly observed here ... all people do is lounge or sit in cafes but all the shops close - its great!!
Aside from that we have walked the entire inner section of the city which revolves around Plaza Independencia, drank coffee, eat lots of icecream (in a place called Ferrucio Soppelsa where you can get a cone with 2 flavours of icecream for 5 pesos and its incredible - pecan cream might be the best but so is the choclate rum and raisin), shopping (our clothes are a disgrace and we have to go to the laundry every 3 days as we only have 2 good tshirts each - we now have 3 ;), the rest can wait til BA), surfing for jobs (agggghhhh pain), eating out (indoor market has a lunch deal of half a pizza, 6 empanadas and a bottle of beer for 20 pesos, went to a great parrilla last night (Estancia La Florencia) and a crap pasta place 2 nights ago called 390 (it was crap in all respects)), eating in (altho the supermarkets have food shortages due to farmer strikes here so no meat or milk and the veggies are not great but we did find curry powder and made a half decent chicken curry), blogging and ... wait for this ... DOING NOTHING (this is the longest sentence ever in a blog). We did think it would be easy to DO NOTHING but since we haven`t done this for longer then each of us can remember its actually really hard. Anyways seems to be getting easier as time passes so another week of this and we`ll be complete slobs!
Ok speaking of which time for coffee or icecream or both maybe as we have another 18 hour bus tonight to Salta. Sleeping pills are our friend ;)
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