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| El Parque Centenario |
So as I said, I got back from my week of traveling last Saturday. We had most of the last week of March/first week of April off for Holy Week (or la Semana Santa as it's referred to here) so a group of us decided to just skip the couple classes that were still being held and take off from Thursday, March 29th to Friday April 6th. Most people left on Wednesday night, but Natalee and I both had classes on Thursday so the two of us started our adventure together on a microbus at 10 PM on Thursday night. It was a 14 hour ride to Mendoza but luckily our bus had really cushy reclining seats so we were able to sleep pretty comfortably for the majority of the bus ride. We arrived in the morning and met up with the rest of our group (Jon, Marie, Judy, Hannah, and Cheri) at our adorable hostel. Unfortunately they didn't have the capacity for all 7 of us for our whole stay we moved to a different hostel the second night.
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| The lounge of our first hostel |
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| And the upstairs patio |
Mendoza is best known as wine country, so our first activity as a group was obviously to verify for ourselves if the wine was a great as everyone says. Our second morning there we started off bright and early on a bike tour of three of the bodegas (wineries) in the area. The first one we went to was a family-owned organic winery called Familia Cecchin. It was literally paradise on earth. I don't know if I've ever seen something so absurdly picturesque. I just wanted to stay there forever. Our guide was a young woman from Colorado who had somehow landed herself a job living at the bodega, giving bilingual tours, learning how to make wine, and just generally enjoying life. My new life goal is to be her. I'm just going to flood this blog with pictures of the bodega because words won't do it justice.
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| P.S. Those are the Andes in the background. |
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| The woman whose job I will one day have |
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| Hannah and I test the wine out for ourselves |
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| Famalia Cecchin also dabbles in the olive oil business
After tasting several of the wines (highly recommended, and they export to the US...) and wandering around the vineyard for a while with our mouths hanging open in awe, we hopped on our bikes and visited two other vineyards. One was for a large, national wine company (not nearly as pretty) and the other one was another small vineyard that provided us with very generous samples. Needless to say, we were all ready for a nap after the tour was done.
For the rest of the afternoon and part of the next day we took it easy and hung out in our new hostel getting to know the people there. We immediately made friends with the hostel manager, Walter, as well as several other fellow travelers. The hostel was linked with a bunch of tourism/excursion companies so on Sunday Cheri and I decided to do the "Sunset Horseback Riding Excursion." We took an hour-long bus ride into the foothills of the Andes and were then led by a bunch of Gauchos on a two hour trail ride, concluded with a hilltop "asado" (BBQ).
 
The next day was pretty uneventful. Cheri left to go back to Buenos Aires and several of us went for a hike through El Parque San Martin, this huge park on the edge of the city of Mendoza. There's a big hill there and from the top you get an incredible view of the surrounding area, including the Andes.
On Tuesday or group parted ways with Marie, Hannah, and Judy returning to Buenos Aires and Jon, Natalee and me taking another overnight bus, this time to Córdoba. It was kind of a spontaneous decision on our part to do Córdoba, but we'd already decided that we wanted to take advantage of all the time that we had off from class, so why not see a different part of the country. We stayed in a hostel in the city of Córdoba, which is the second largest city in Argentina after Buenos Aires. The city is known for its Jesuit architecture and the surrounding province for its beautiful hills and countryside. We spent the first day exploring the city (we actually did one of those ridiculously cheesy city tours in a red double-decker bus) and getting to know some of the people in our hostel. There were two people there that Jon had met in Patagonia earlier in the semester, so that was a fun little reunion.
An example of the classic Jesuit architecture
Neo-gothic cathedral
And some slightly more modern stuff
On the second day we got out of the city and went to Villa Carlos Paz, a really gorgeous town about an hour outside the city. It was a little more touristy than I would have liked but we managed to get away from a lot of that with a two hour hike through the hills. After that we lazed around by the lake and treated ourselves to an evening paddle boat ride.
A hilltop view of Villa Carlos Paz
The next day was our final day of the trip. We spent it wandering around the city some more and relaxing in the hostel. By this point all three of us were pretty travel-worn and you could definitely tell we were all ready to get back to Buenos Aires and our own beds. We did another all-night bus ride back and arrived home dazed and exhausted at 7:30 AM at which point we all went to our respective houses and slept for the rest of the day.
I've spent this past week catching up on homework, going to class, and taking care of all the things I was ignoring for the past week of travel. As much as I love traveling, it's actually been really nice getting into a routine and finally feeling more settled here in Buenos Aires. I started an acting class that Cata is teaching on Wednesday nights and I've found myself a conversation buddy through my volunteer job who wants to practice her English. I also spent all of yesterday working on a group project for my other acting class at IUNA. It was exhausting but really exhilarating to be working with my Argentine peers on something productive that I can actually contribute to.
I think I'll cut it off there since this post is getting ridiculously long and I still have yet to shower and change out my running clothes.
¡Chau!
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