The Home Stretch

As many of you will realize, Emily and I are no longer in South America. In fact, we have been state side for over two months and we have yet to finish documenting whole last month of our trip. Unfortunately this means that some details may be lost, and our point of view may not be as authentically that which it was at the end of a six month tour, however we are in a great place now (which we will get to in the next post) and we can still conjure up our memories of Argentina at the drop of an alfajor. So I will pick up where we left off...Puerto Madryn, Argentina.

After getting our fill of whale gazing, we decided it was time to move north to Mendoza. For those who may not realize, Argentina is a huge country so from Puerto Madryn to Medoza we traveled about 900 miles over 22 hours on a bus. Quite a distance, but only a fraction of the total length of the country which is somewhere around 2500 miles (4000 km). This may sound like an awful bus ride, but the busses in Argentina are top of the line with fully reclinable seats, movies, meals, even wine and champagne. Not a bad way to travel.

Emily on a Cruz del Sur bus

Mendoza is a region known for wine production. The capital of the region is the city of Mendoza, which is where many people go to visit the wineries that surround the city. This was our main purpose for visiting, and we quickly got to the task of planning our day of wine tasting which would coincide with Emily's birthday on August 17th. Most tours focus on an area called Maipu, just outside of Mendoza city. Maipu contains a bunch of different wineries as well as vineyards, some of which are high production, national and export brands, while others are small artisanal productions that might have a few sales outlets or none at all besides right there at the source. To visit all of these wineries there are group tours, private tours etc, but what really had piqued our interest was the option of a bike tour. In Maipu the wineries are so close and the terrain so flat that riding a bike, even after several glasses of wine, seemed like a good option. So, on the morning of the 17th, we took a cab out to Mr. Hugo's bike rentals in Maipu and we were on our red beach cruisers by 10:30 am. In Argentina August is still pretty much winter time, but lucky for us the day we chose for our touring was ideal. Sunny, warm, no wind, and while the vines were all brown and barren of leaves, the upside as always in winter was a lack of traffic. Most of the time we were the only two people around riding through the countryside.

Biking under the influence!

Thems some big barrels of wine!

We were able to visit four wineries in all including a delicious lunch at Familia di Tomaso where we also tasted some of our favorite wines. Also worth mentioning was our last stop at Bodega Tempus Alba where we tasted more of our favorites of the day while sitting on their second story terrace overlooking thier vineyards.  Altogether an amazing day, and although we were BUI (biking under the influence) by the end of the day, we had a private motorcycle police escort from the last winery back to the bike shop. (We weren't in trouble- this is just a courtesy the local police provide for the imbibing tourists!) Flashing lights and everything, we might have been more embarrased if we weren't loving every minute of it. For the rest of our time in Mendoza we relaxed in the massive Parque Gral. San Martin or snacking at the cafes on Avenida Aristides with the students from the university of Mendoza. After a few days we were ready to continue on to Cordoba.

Lunch at the oldest winery in Maipu

Cordoba is only a few hours by bus from Mendoza. It is the second largest city in Argentina and is considered a cultural capital beside Buenos Aires. There are 6 universities in Cordoba including the oldest one in the country. Aside from being cool facts to know, these were all things that really sold us on the city. It is big, but it is exciting, there are a ton of things to do, great food to eat, parks, plazas, peotenales (pedestrian only streets) etc. We spent a few days in the city touring around, sampling the food, including our first Argentine choripan in Sarmiento park which is famous for the delicious sausage sandwiches.

Choripan Stand in the park: grilled sausage on a roll with your choice of about 15 different types of Chimichurri, pickled vegetables and hot salsas.

It makes Kurt very HAPPY!

 On our third day in town we took a day trip to the outskirts of town, a place called Capilla del Monte. Since we were back in warmer climates we wanted to get a little hiking.  Mt. Uritorco is mountain in Capilla del Monte which the local people claim is inhabited by aliens and that by night it emits a halo-like glow.  The day of our climb there was a nearby wildfire which killed the visibility but we still got tons of positive energy from the benign resident aliens!

This looks like Emily but actually an alien inhabited her body for this pose.
It was a pretty cool alien.

We left Cordoba in great spirits.  We ended up really liking the city and couldn't help but look at it as just a preview to what we would find in Buenos Aires.  Our next stop was Iguazu Falls.

WATER!

So here are some things that I remember about Iguazu (I definitely didn't just go to wikipedia).  Iguazu falls spans the border of north/eastern Argentina and south/eastern Brazil and just below the falls is a three way border with Paraguay as well.  There are 275 individual falls comprising the entire Iguazu falls region with an average height of about 210 ft and the highest at 270 ft.  You may recognize Iguazu from such feature films as 007's Moonraker, staring Sean Connery or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull starring Harrison Ford.

Refreshing

Now that you have some reference for the majestic Iguazu I will tell you about the Iguazu that we got to know.  As you can imagine, a wonder such as this can draw quite a sizeable tourist crowd, however the area is so huge and developed so well that it was still a real pleasure for us to spend two full days within the park.  The climate for us was great especially after being down south in the winter cold.  In Iguazu we were back to a warm and humid subtropical climate, sandles and t-shirts.  The area surrounding the falls is rainforest and wildlife is abundant.  We bought a two day pass to the National Park and were able to see all of the falls the first day and take a boat ride right under a few of them.  Check out the picture below this paragraph.  That spec at the bottom of the waterfall is a boat that we got to ride on.  Eventually the whole boat would dissappear in the wash soaking everyone on board to the bones within an instant.  It was a rush!

Wet and wild ride

On our second day we took a short but nice hike to a secluded water fall a few miles down river.  Besides staring at the massive and endless amounts of water pouring over the edges of the Earth all around us, we were in a rainforest which meant there were tons of cool plants and animals running free on all sides of us including...

Coaties: these things are like the racoons of the area.  The park workers scared them away by rubbing a blown up balloon with their hand to make a loud noise

Turtles: good thing he got out here, the falls were just a few hundred yard down river!

Butterflies: they were everywhere and in every color and pattern.  They like to lick salt of people.

Monkeys: this one is called a Capuchin monkey.  Very miscevious.

Tucan! Follow your nose!

Our last night in Iguazu we got one of those famously delicious and famously cheap Argentinian steaks.  We ended up deciding it was the best one we'd had anywhere, maybe ever.  The next day we went to the bus station with a strange feeling.  This was to be our very last bus ride of the trip.  As far as bus rides go, that was a very good thing to think about, however that also meant we were getting close to the end.  Luckily we had saved the last two weeks to relax and really explore a place we had both been thinking about and talking about for the past 6 months; Buenos Aires.

Emily waiting for our last bus