Part 15: Mendoza - A Most Charming Andean City

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 Mendoza Photographs

30th November 2003

As usual, I woke up quite early – the landscape remained the same for the better part of the morning. As we were nearing Mendoza, majestic Andean ranges were becoming visible on the horizon and so were occasional green patches of trees and vegetations. Highest peaks of Andes are located near Mendoza, highest one being Mount Aconcagua at 6959m.

Mendoza is located at an altitude of 760m at the foothills of Andes, at the bank of Mendoza River and it is the provincial capital of the province of Mendoza. It is also the wine Capital of Argentina – the surrounding regions   produce 70% of all Argentine wines.

We arrived at the Mendoza bus terminal around midday. As I entered the bus terminal looking for hotel Information booth – somebody called from behind “there is Moin” – a surprised me turned around to find smiling Jack and Rosalin – what a surprise, last time I saw them in Calafate, they were heading for Puerto Madryn and me for Buenos Aires. What a pleasant surprise – They were in Mendoza for last few days, now taking a bus to Santiago, where they will wait for their USA work visa to arrive. They are planning to have a working break of 6 months in USA, before resuming their world tour. After a brief chat, they departed for Santiago.

I booked a room in Hotel Rinkon Vasconia – an air-conditioned room for 35 Peso/day or US$12/day. Not a bad room, although traffic noises filters in – who cares, now a days I can sleep anywhere. Checked my e-mails (internet cafes are everywhere) had lunch and took a long nap – it was a hot day in Mendoza.

I went out late in the afternoon, first made a phone call to Sydney, to talk with my mother who is to undergo an operation on 4th of December. Then I went walking around the Mendoza city center.

The city center is completely rectangular; grided by tree-lined streets, at the center is large Plaza Independencia and pedestrian mall at Avenue Sarmiento, and at the four corners of the rectangular center are four more smaller Plazas; Plaza Chile at NE corner, Plaza San Martin at NW, Plaza Espana at SW and Plaza Chile at SE each plaza with its own fountain and tree lined parks.

I liked this city – it’s a city with the charm of a quiet small town – slow paced life, street sides cafes bustling with people lazing with their family and friends. In  plaza Independencia there were some weekly handicraft market – next to it a armature theatre group was performing, with a large crowd watching - in anther corner there is small children’s park, with children making raucous – The whole city seemed so pleasantly lively.

Every street of Mendoza is so completely tree lined – they create a complete canopy over the streets, protecting people from the hot summer sun. I walked all around – watching this lively display of life.

Later, when I got hungry, had dinner in a typical Tenidor Libre restaurant – there were many to choose from, I just walked into one, which had a live band playing. Music was typical Spanish/Argentine folk music – diners were very often joining the musicians in popular choruses – I had a very large and leisurely dinner in these joyful surroundings - all these cost me only US$4.

Back in the hotel, I was pondering over my future journeys – I got about 17/18 days left before departing South America – I am yet to cover northern corner of Argentina, Solar De Atacama in Chile, and then whole of Bolivia and Peru – surely in 17/18 days I could only cover some of it only, particularly considering that I want to stall here in Mendoza till my mother’s operation is over on 4th , it would only leave with 12 days, as I would also need another 2 days in Buenos Aires before departure.

There is only limited options – either I could do northern the corner of Argentina, Solar De Atacama and southern tip of Bolivia adjacent to Chile and Argentina – Or I could have a return Air trip to Peru to cover the Inca Valley, Cusco to Machupichu. Either way it would be tight, but the first option is riskier as transportation would be over the land, particularly the Bolivia is very unpredictable. I decided to try the Peru option first thing next morning.

1 December 2003

First thing in the morning, I went to a travel agent and booked a return air ticket from Mendoza to Cusco in Peru. I will be flying via Santiago and Lima to Cusco, with an overnight stopover in Santiago. I will leave on 4th morning and return to Mendoza on the 11th. This will leave me with few extra days if I decide to cover Salta in Northern Argentina before returning to Buenos Aires for the final departure. For the next day, I also booked a whole day trip around the lower ranges of Andes including Uspallata Valley 105 km away from Mendoza.

Rest of the day I took it easy, mostly loitering around the town – watching daily life going by, my favourite past time.
Made a phone call to Sydney, talked with my mother – wrote up some part of my diary, it is now lagging quite far.

2 December 2003

The tour bus picked me up from the hotel around 8:00 AM. We started along the Mendoza Santiago main road; it runs almost parallel to the Mendoza River. As we went uphill the Mendoza River became a huge gorge with 80m high steep sides, with a ticklish water flow – now a day that’s the maximum flow - the huge gorge was created at a prehistoric time by the descending glaciers and massive water flows. Surrounding mountainsides on this side of Andes are largely barren, but there are amazing varieties of colours, mostly in reddish hew. About 50 KM down the road, the bus diverted to climb the highest point in the lower Andes (3000m) to watch Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the entire Andes and whole of Americas.
 

The road is extremely winding and steep – there is a saying that there are 365 bends and turns along the way – as the bus climbed up, it presented spectacular views of the winding roads below – I stuck out my head through the window to take couple of photographs. We stopped at a bend offering the best view, to take it in and to take few more photographs. Fortunately, although the tour guide spoke only Spanish, an Argentine couple sitting next to me spoke good English and was kind enough to translate the important bits for me.

We reached the top of the lower ranges “Cross of the Paramillo” at 3000m, it was barren and rather flat, offering spectacular views of the snow capped peaks of high Andes, including Mount Aconcagua (6959m).
 

After lingering there for half an hour, we began descending towards Uspallata Valley at an altitude of 1750m. It is a lush green valley of pristine beauty surrounded by polychrome mountains. Many tourists and backpackers use this valley as a base to explore the surrounding areas. We were just passing through – we briefly stopped for morning tea break and few photographs.

Soon we headed towards Bridge of the Incas at an altitude of 2,720m. This time we travelled along the main highway from Mendoza to Santiago. The highway goes along the deep gorge of the Mendoza River. There is a now disused railway line, which also runs along the highway. This railway line used to carry the freight between Mendoza and the Chilean port of Valparaiso via Santiago – now the development of more efficient road transportation system has made it redundant.

On the way to the Bridge of the Incas we briefly stopped at Gorge of Horcones, which offers a majestic view of Mount Aconcagua. Soon after we arrived at the sulphur coloured bridge. The bridge was created naturally from salt deposits from the adjacent natural hot spring. There used be a hotel just below the bridge with hot baths structured around the few outlets of the hot spring. That hotel structure was partially destroyed in an earthquake few years back. Remanent of the structure is open for tourist viewing – although one has to be very careful.

I walked over the yellowish bridge and then walked down the stairs to the hot springs in the remanent of the hotel structures. There are still few bathhouses around the few hot spring outlets. Tourists, who came prepared to take bath were bathing in the hot springs. I had no such preparations – so after taking few photographs I walked towards the farthest end of the structure underneath the bridge – it is a wide arch created by salt deposits, continuously dripping hot spring water and depositing more salts.

Our next stop was near a now disused border post near Argentina –Chile border. The actual border is few kilometres down the road. We had a brief stopover there before heading back to a tourist hotel along the highway to have a late lunch.

After lunch we headed back to Mendoza along the main highway. We had a number of sightseeing stopovers, mostly to take in the amazing Andean landscape we were travelling through. Most spectacular was the massive naturally created stone structure that looks like a real mediaeval fortress.

We arrived back in Mendoza around 7:30 pm, still late afternoon. After taking shower I went out again - hanged around Plaza Independencia - then had dinner, checked emails and returned to the hotel to retire.

3 December 2003

Decided to spend the day exploring the Parque San Martin, a 400 hectare forested green park covering the northern edge of Mendoza. It contains Cerro de la Gloria (a high viewing platform with statue of General San Martin, liberator of Chile and Argentina), a hillside zoo, several museums and a lake.

Although there are buses, I decided to walk the few kilometres through the leafy streets of Mendoza – it was such pleasant walk. The park has many serpentine walkways covering the entire park. Soon I realised that the park is too big for me to cover on feet – so I decided to take a combination tour. There are tour buses leaving every hour from near the tourist office just inside the main park entrance. I bought a tour bus ticket for few pesos – my intention was to take the bus to the top viewing platform, comedown with it near the entrance of the zoo  (I heard it has some birds and other animals unique to this region) and then walk the rest.

The bus went around all the popular viewing sights, frequently stopping to give photo opportunity to the tourists – it is a well planned and a well-maintained splendid park, with many varieties of plants, some very unique to this region.

As we climbed towards the top viewing platform, I got opportunities to take a few shots of  the tree covered Mendoza city from well located bends.

At the apex of the viewing platform there is a beautiful statue of General San Martin on a charging horse. I was trying to get a clear shot of the statue – there were a group of school children in front of the statue, so I waited till they leave. Soon all the children moved away, except one – a little girl was lingering on the steps of the statue – so I waited, fiddling with focus and zoom – then a mischievous smile on the little girls face told me she is actually waiting to be in my photograph – I asked, would she – with a shy smile she nodded and sat down – I took the photograph – she now ran to join her friends – I asked her name – she is Sala.

I took few more shots of San Martin’s statue and some wide-angle view of Mendoza. Soon after we headed down and the bus dropped me near the entrance of the zoo.

It is a quite a large zoo in a natural setting on the slope of a hill. I mostly covered the bird section – there were few very colourful parrots – I took close up photographs of each one – unfortunately forgot to note down their species name.

After the zoo, I had my lunch in a small kiosk inside the park – Later part of the day spent walking around this serene park, gradually walking back towards the entrance.

I returned to the hotel on feet around 6:00pm – I was quite tired.

4 December 2003

Early in the morning I called Sydney (already afternoon there) to learn about my mothers operation – no answer, probably everybody is still at the hospital. Little I later I checked my email – I was relieved – my brother has emailed that my mothers operation went very well and she is now in post operative care, regained her sense and doing quite fine    – I was so relieved.

Around 10:00am I checked out from the hotel and headed for the airport to catch the 12:00 noon flight to Santiago on my way to Cusco via Lima. I have an overnight stopover in Santiago – my connecting flight to Lima is at 9:00 AM next day. I had no plan to go out in Santiago – too much hassle getting to the city and then coming back next day early in the morning – my plan was to sleep in the transit lounge for the night.

The one-hour flight took off on time and climbed up steeply – soon we were over the highest peaks of Andes. The flight from Mendoza to Santiago and Santiago to Mendoza has two different flight paths due to wind direction – this one goes over the highest peaks and the return flights comes through some lower ranges.

I took quite a few shots of magnificent Andean peaks from my window seat. Flight was rather smooth except for few minutes and we landed in Santiago on time, around 1:00 PM.

I had about 20 hours to spend in the transit lounge – some experience – I selected a quieter corner of the airport to sleep at night. I brought Gabriel Garcia’s “love In The Time of Cholera” – to pass time. It was too serious a book to concentrate in the busy transit lounge. So I had lunch -loitered around – window shopped – had some coffee – had some snacks – had some more coffee – had dinner – loitered around more – had more coffee – window shopped little more - actually bought something – had more coffee – and then around 11:00am I went to sleep in a quiet corner.

I slept on the carpet – sort of bigger bed than narrow sofas. I slept rather well, till a cleaner with the rambling cleaning trolley woke me up around 5:00AM. My 3 hour flight to lima took off on time, around 9:00 AM.
 

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