Getting High

My first day in Mendoza I spent wandering Mendoza's streets, uploading blogs, playing table tennis & sampling a new beer (Andes). Mendoza centro, with it's tree-lined, wide streets and café culture, is aiming for a Parisian vibe. Slightly wide of the mark, it's a big dirty city with open sewers and no bins. A bad combination. While you look for a bin to deposit your rubbish one can unwittingly end up in 2 ft down in a steam of poo. Other observations are that a) Mendoza seems also to have a large quantity of pregnant women, b) while there are many taxis about, it is virtually impossible to stop one and c) the food and unsurprisingly, wine here are great, in both quality and value.

That night, after much cheap plonk, I fell asleep, fully dressed - much to the amusement of Nicole and Lana, my dormies. At 3am, I undress & slip back to sleep. An hour or so later, light sleeping Lana is woken by me sleep talking (here we go again!). However, this time it's different. The following morning Lana explained to me: "You were sleeptalking last night. But it wasn't in English, or Spanish, it was a completely different language. It had full punctuation and grammar, and you spoke for a full minute, took a deep sigh and fell back to sleep. I don't know if you're religious, but I think you may have been posessed by the holy spirit! It's alm Sunday today! It sounded like tongues!" So there you are! A new sleep disturbance to go along with snoring, farting, sneezing; SLEEP POSESSION!! What range! What style.

Anyhoos, today Nicole and I took the 12 hour 'High Mountain Tour', which did exactly what it said on the tin, and took us up through the Andes & up a real high mountain. A grand and spectacular place, changing round every bend. Vast open valleys, skirted by gargantuan colourful, but bare, mountains, some snowcapped year round. They filmed 7 Years In Tibet here.

Initially annoyed cos the bus raced past some amazing viewpoints and pulled in with every other Mendozan tour bus at the crap spots.A view of a mountain with the sun straight in our face and an old bridge packed with tours. Can I get more tourists in my photo please?!

Further up the valley we stopped to tale in the highest mountain in all the Americas, Cerro Aconcagua, standing proud at 6900m. Then we took a left at the Chilean border, and climbed up endless sheer switchback curves for a quick snowball fight above the snowline. Atop the 4200m Cerro Christo stands a giant statue of 'Christ Redentor' with an Argey Flag one side and Chilean flag t'other, to symbolise the peaceful settlement of the border. The route up to the top isn't always open due to adverse weather. We struck it lucky, with crystal blue skies. Yesterday it was closed due to snow.

Racing back down the wet dirt tracks I was struck by a very real fear of death. The driver was clearly a mental, overtaking cars full of cautious tourists. The whole day he'd taken the racing line and only put his belt on as he came up to police check areas. But we made it down safe and sound and the man got a round of applause (more a "thank the lord you did not kill us", than a "what a skill driver you are").

The views up and down the valley more than made up for the earlier impotent viewpoints and limp english translation. Hanging out the window taking pix of the van and views a police check man pulled us in and asked me not to lean out of the window. I coudln't understand a word he said and though it was "Do you want to take a photo of me?" Fortunately I checked with Nicole before I took his picture. Two bends later I was hanging out again taking lovely photos of the van & views.

Our final stop was an Inca Spa at Punta del Inca, on the bend of the river where hot sulphuric springs bubbled into the river. The rest of the Inca town above had been wiped out by a big dirty avalance centuries ago, but the spar they built around the spring remained, under a natural bridge, stained a rusty orange and covered in wacky stalagmights. A makeshift market sold all sorts of lama related products, and I was more than tempted to buy a stiff white lama emblazened crochet cowboy hat (see photo when I finally get them up). At 3 quid it was more than tempting, but wisdom got the better of me & I restisted...


Barnaby