These stories feature our special guest star, Uncle Lucho! If you think he added maturity to our little walking chaos, you are wrong ;) you will see!
As soon as we landed in the city of Mendoza, we made straight for the mountains. It was dark, so all we could see were shadows as we drove by. It was about 2 hours (probably should have been 3, but Lucho liked 4th gear) until we came upon the only open hotel and called it a night. It felt right though, because the desk attendant had also worked at Aspen! Reminders of home everywhere. The next morning had some of the coolest moments of the trip thus far - the utter shock of where we were when the sun came up. I can only describe our surroundings as a mix of the Rockies with the red tables of Utah, all multiplied by 2. Looking out the windows of the hotel, we could barely see the tips of the mountains right outside. As we began to drive, they only became bigger, with strands of green and black and various other colors through the rocks. Few things were able to grow at such a high elevation, but the grass that could made the mountains seem somewhat gold. We then hiked a few miles into a canyon to get a closer look at Aconcagua, the biggest mountain in the Americas. I've never seen anything like it, with huge glaciers hanging off the south face hundreds of miles from where we were but seeming so clear. We were nearly the only ones on the trail, making it nearly silent except for our crunching and giggles. It felt so good.
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| I forgot to mention...Addy barbequed her jacket by standing to close to a heater. Ha! |
After our hike we kept driving west towards the border of Chile, and found a little restaurant for lunch. After we offended an aggressive lady by asking if they used butter (Mariana has been my champion) we ate some yummy sandwiches and found a windy dirt road up a mountain that divided Chile and Argentina. On our way, we kept hearing Victoria giggle while eating, but we were all pretty focused. Once we had finished, we looked over and she was wearing at least half her sandwich in crumbs on herself. When we made fun of her, she shared, and we all ended up crumby. Anyways, at this point Addy and I hadn't really talked to Lucho all that much - his English is much better than our Spanish (not surprising, I know) but this road is when things started to change. I should have never shown fear. However, curvy dirt roads that look straight down 100 ft. do unfortunately make me a little nervous. Well, Lucho thought that maybe the look on my face meant go faster and drift a bit. Luckily, he was an excellent driver and knew what he was doing, but I'm just hoping Addy's left arm is going to recover soon from my grip. Once we got to the top, we came to a structure that seemed to be a lookout at some point with a small parking area. Lucho drove forward and said "Argentina," then backed up and said "Chile". Then repeated a few times. Point taken - we have now visited 2 South American countries! The views from the top were just as incredible, with a huge glacier on the mountain just across from us. Once I agreed to get back in the car with Lucho (actually it wasn't that hard, it was freezing) we drove down the other side into Chile to get a view from the canyon. After a little more joy from scaring Lauren, it was time to head down before the snowstorm came in. The drive out was very beautiful, for everything we had missed the day before was visible now. We drove towards our adventure the next day, however we apparently were not done with the day yet. We had been driving for at least 4 hours when we started getting close to our hotel in San Rafael. It was a little ways out of town deeper into the canyon, and the only way to get there is a long 2 lane road. Well, at about 12 miles out, we heard Lucho start to laugh. At about 8, we couldn't take it anymore and asked Mariana why he was laughing. Apparently, we were out of gas. Not only that, we had been out of gas for a while, but didn't think to stop before leaving town on this thin road to nowhere. At about 5 miles, we were sputtering. We were trying to figure out how we were going to run that far at all, let alone fast enough to get there before morning. We did have one stroke of luck in that the road was partially downhill. What did that mean for Lucho? To turn the car off and coast until absolutely necessary. For those of you who know as little about cars as I do, that means that the power steering and the brakes also shut off, which I only figured out when the road turned very suddenly and we were living in a Mario Cart race. At about 3 miles, Addy, Vic, and I started stretching for the run because the gas light was blinking. I've never seen a gas light get tired before. However, despite all the yelling and shocked laughter and head holding, we were somehow able to creep our way into the resort and stop in the garage. After that, we pretty much just laughed the whole rest of the night. Thus, the birth of Lucho's future band name, Lucho Sin Gas.
I was hard on Addy's jacket to say the least...
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| Chile and Argentina! |
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| Lucho con gas |
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| My thoughts after Lucho sin gas. |
The next day was a little less dramatic, excluding the rainstorm that seems to have followed Victoria from graduation. Despite being chilly, we were able to spend the day driving through the canyon, jamming out to our favorite songs, and stopping occasionally for hikes or snacks. That night we had arranged to stay in a cabin a few hours away, so by the time we arrived in the area it was dark. We were able to slide into the grocery store at 8:58 before they closed at 9 to collect some ingredients for dinner before making our way to the cabin. Once we were able to see the inconspicuous dirt road, we started to roll slowly down, across the creaky old bridge, crossed paths with a bright white dog (we assumed that to be good luck as it is the opposite of a black cat) and made it all the way to the end of the road to find absolutely nothing. Then, out the left window, a man appeared and scared the crap out of me (I'm pretty jumpy) before pointing to our right to a fence that was opening for us to drive in. Inside there were a few cabins, but the only thing we really saw were the 5 dogs running around. The cabin was lovely and we had plenty of time to showcase our competitiveness in cards of every kind (including Dutch Blitz, don't worry) before heading to bed. We had to cuddle though, those beds were a little chilly!
The next day we got the full wine country experience. We visited 2 wineries, one large fancy new one and one family vineyard, and a custom knife shop. The first winery was gigantic, with huge racks of barrels and stainless steel equipment. Despite the still cloudy sky, it was awe-inspiring. The knife shop was neat too, as they custom make each knife by hand, and were doing so right in front of us. However, the last stop was my personal favorite - the family vineyard was what you'd think of in a old storybook that has probably looked the same for 50 years. We got a personal tour of the facility and even got to walk through the vines. Addy and I even helped put stickers on a bottle (which we then bought - support the industry, you know)? That night was an easy one, with the only weirdness being that the driveway to our cabana was made entirely of walnut shells. They have a use for everything here! Just another reason Addy is not allowed to push me out of a moving vehicle, despite how much she wants to sometimes.
Our last day in Mendoza was chaulked full of surprises. The first was when we first woke up and walked outside to see the bright blue sky. Finally! Then, when we got out to the main road, all of our jaws just dropped. We were staring at mountains twice as tall as the Rockies that wrapped all the way around us and were now covered in snow. The day before we couldn't see them at all, so we had no idea they were there. So, we drove through as many vineyards as we could until we got into some of the smaller mountains. Then, as we were driving on a road towards a supposed hike, the road got very snowy to the point we were going to have to turn around. Just then, a group on horseback came down from the trail we were hoping to climb. As they were leaving, the guide asked us if we wanted to go. While Addy and Vic both HATE horses, they were good sports and we rode around for about an hour in the mountains. We were able to distract Addy with the pack of dogs that were with us, so I think they both made it out unscathed. Afterwards we had a really delicious lunch at the only building up there before heading back to the city to catch our bus to the north. It was hard to say goodbye to Lucho, but we will never stop at another gas station without stating "Lucho sin gas" beforehand!
Finally, around 9PM we hopped on the double-decker overnight bus north. Just a note - same way it wasn't great to play Jaws on our flight to Hawaii, perhaps a horror movie wasn't a great choice for the nighttime bus (I've been corrected that it wasn't technically a horror movie, just creepy, but it was both to me). After 13 hours and a quick pit stop at the Tucuman bus station, we got on our final bus for a while (I hope), which showed us a much different province than we were in yesterday. The endless rows of grapes have been replaced with spanning fields of lime green sugar cane. The mountains still rise high, however only the very tops are powdered with snow now. Oh, and the sky is blue! The fields slowly grew into a jungle, which is where we are winding through right now. There are endless layers of every color of green tree, stacked on more mountains, with small rivers running far beneath us. I am only really looking up though, this bus is a little big for this road...Don't worry Mom :) In about 2 hours we will be in our next province with Victoria's uncle, Edwardo. Share more then! Love and miss you all, thanks for checking in :)
