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Mendoza, Argentina
32° 53' S 68° 48' W
Feb 20, 2007 17:02
Distance 931km

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Other entries in Mendoza

city of trees

Text written in: English

as we returned the car the day before yesterday in Bariloche, fixed all the things ... took a shower finally ;) and got prepared for another 17 hours bus ride, we arrived well in Mendoza yesterday.

Before i tried to find a hostel i checked my emails, because i hoped that someone from HC would have replied my request for accomodation, but too bad that nobody replied. So i started - never did that before - to send a few text messages to people who had their number on their profile and see - i found a accomodation and a girl who hung out with me for the afternoon yesterday in the afternoon.

At first i went for lunch with Diego, who gives me accomodation a little bit outside of town, in a nice district and a even better appartement with a huge patio, which he shares with his girlfriend Cecilia. After having lunch i met the other member from HC and we spent the time at Placa Independencia with two friends of her, discussing various heavy metal festivals in Argentina, as they were very much into heavy metal (they've got a sweet pronunciation for that expression :) ). The Placa Independencia is the center of the microcentro and there are four parks at each edge of the microcentro. All of them appear to be copied from southern spanish cities, as they've all got nice placas with marmor surfaces, a lot of palms and a lot of lawn ... also some fountains and white impresionalistic structures can be found. The really intersting thing about Mendoza is the fact that there are trees everywhere ... in all districts, where people (with at least some money) live ... but Mendoza is surrounded by dessert. What they did, was making big channels throughout the whole city and  they provide small channels on both sides of the street where they planted all the trees. It's really funny to see that, especially because we moved a little bit outside of the city where you could see the real vegetation in this part of Argentina. As Mendoza was stroken by many earthquakes, all the houses have only one or two floors and you can't see a lot of the city if you're a little bit above, as everything is covered by trees.

The remaining days in Mendoza i spent on my own during the day and with Diego and Cecilia at night, who both turned out to be really good friends from the first moment on. They were so kind and hospitable as i rarely experienced it before and so excited to meet somebody from abroad, to make other cultural experiences ... was really great staying there.
The second evening they cooked an asado and invited some friends for dinner (the day before i cooked Kasspatzla ;) ) and we sat there for quite a while chatting and drinking good (and cheap) wine.
On the last day i had to do some tourist activities and therefore i went to the Bodega (vineyard) of a suiss man called "Winert" and did a excursion and degustation there :) - really good wine ... too bad the time is too long and my backpack too full to carry some home. In the afternoon i had a look at the museo fundacional, where they reserve archeological treasures of the very beginning of the city. The last big earthquake was in 1861 and destroyed almost the whole city, therefore they only build houses with one or two floors anymore.
In the evening we went for a run in park of "San Martin" which is huge and includes various theatres and a few faculties of the university in Mendoza. Diego and Cecilia are used to going for a long walk in the park with their working companions every wednesday to work out there a little bit ... nice habit and i had the possibility to hike up a small hill ... right next to cerro de gloria, the view point of mendoza.
in the evening i didn't want to hang out for too long as i knew that i have to get up the next morning at 4.30 am, as my bus was going to leave at 6 am at the terminal.