Mendoza Trip: City Day 2

On our second day in Mendoza, Drew had booked us a walking tour, which, in my opinion, is a wonderful way to see any city. You get a much deeper historical perspective, and there is a lot to gain hearing a local's perspective as well.  The first piece of info shared was that in 1861, Mendoza suffered a 7.2 level earthquake, which killed more than 12,000 people, and the entire city was basically destroyed. So you aren't going to see super old, colonial aged buildings within the city for this reason. The city was rebuilt in a slightly different location over the next few years. They integrated a plaza structure into the city planning, basically parks that provide safe open space for people to flee to if there was ever another earthquake of that severity. You can see the large Plaza Independencia in the middle, with four satellite plazas radiating off of it, for this purpose.  The satellite plazas are: Plaza España, Plaza San Martin, Plaza Chile, and Plaza Italia. We visited Plaza España, Plaza San Martin, and Plaza Independencia on the tour, and then Drew and I hit the other two in our own explorations.

The next tidbit the tour guide shared was that in addition to the plaza integration, the city planners also wanted to provide the city with the feeling of an oasis. This part of Argentina is extremely dry, as the Andes block all of the moisture coming from the Pacific in the west. So all of the irrigation is brought in from rivers that come off the mountains, and it's controlled with canals, ditches, etc. So the entire city has these deep ditches in between the sidewalks and the roads, to control the flow of water. She said you're not a true Mendozian until you have a personal story of falling into one of these ditches, sober or otherwise.  They achieved the oasis feeling by planting an impressive amount of trees, every 15 feet or so along every street in downtown. The skyline is not particularly tall, you so get the lovely, tree-lined avenue feeling throughout the entire city. The trees also take advantage of the ditches for water. The trees also provide much needed shade, as apparently in the summer, temps can get up into the 90s. 

There were also trees I had never seen before. This was my favorite. It looked like a weeping willow, but it was huge, and the leaves were more fern like. No idea what it was specifically; any tree lovers out there that can shed some light? 

The first plaza we visited on the walking tour was Plaza España. The first thing you notice when you start walking through it is that the entire thing is covered by beautiful little colored tiles. They do repeat eventually, but there must be 24 or more different patterns. I think they're supposed to represent different provinces in Spain?

In the center of the Plaza is a lovely fountain that leads you to a large statue and tiled mural. The statue depicts the relationship between Spain and Argentina during the 1600s and 1700s. Spain is the lady on the viewer's left. She is larger and more mature, and she holds books, representing the culture, history, and learning Spain provided to Argentina. Argentina, the lady on the right, is smaller and physically more immature, and she holds grapes, representing the agricultural fruits of labor Argentina provided.  You can also see the ox and plow on the bottom section of the statue, mirroring this same sentiment, while above that is a ship, showing the immigration from Spain.

The tiled murals were impressive. The one in the middle depicts the meeting of the indigenous peoples with the Spanish immigrants, having peaceful, Thanksgiving vibes at the founding of the city by Pedro del Castillo in 1561. Guessing it didn't go down that way, but that's what it shows. 

The mural on the far right is a scene from Don Quixote. The scene to the left of that is more farming love. It's clear what Argentina was valued for back then. The dry climate with mountain water irrigation makes it the Napa Valley of Argentina. 

The mural on the far left is a scene from another famous literary work, this time a poem called The Gaucho Martin Fierro written by José Hernández in 1872. To the right of that, the mural depicts the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. In the moment, this surprised me; why did they care about Christopher Columbus? But this was quickly followed by a "No Shit" second moment. Christopher Columbus discovered the Americassssss as in plural. North and South America. In 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he actually landed in the Bahamas. And, to be fair, more of South America was claimed by Spain who funded Christopher Columbus than in North America. So they have an even stronger connection to him than us North American folks. And yet, my US default mentality was "That's our history, not yours!" Wrong. 

After Plaza España, we went to Plaze Independencia, which is the largest one in the middle. We had actually visited this plaza the night before, that was where the boys gathered their fan club. But this time around, we got more insight on the large fountain in the middle. Originally, this plaza was going to house the Parliment Building, and they even began construction on it. But then they changed their minds, and moved all government buildings to a different Civic Park a few blocks away. They then converted the foundation of that palace into the modern art museum we breezed through the night prior and a theatre. The fountain was added to decorate the outside later on. Pretty cool huh? Once you realize that info nugget, you can picture the ghost of that palace, can't you? Pretty cool. 

Along the tour we passed by the gorgeous old Banco Hipotecario National or National Mortgage Bank, which now the center of Culture in Mendoza. The building is younger than it looks, built in 1924, but I loved all the intricacies of its neoclassical architecture. 

We ended the tour in this very non-descript building that inside has this gorgeous stained glass ceiling. I honestly don't remember what this building was, now it's just a little shopping mall. But this is why I love walking tours with a local. We would have never seen this otherwise. 

After the tour, we went for lunch/dinner at a restaurant recommended by the tour guide called Fuente y Fonda, which serves traditional Argentinian dishes family style. It was delicious and right up our alley. We ended the day by going to the arcade that was directly below our Airbnb. The boys had been eyeing it all weekend, and now, when you ask them what their favorite part of Mendoza was, they say the arcade. 

Overall I loved Mendoza. It felt like Old Town Fort Collins but bigger. The food was definitely more expensive than what we were used to in Santiago, but it was delicious, as was the wine. It has very nice, tranquil vibes. I would definitely go back for a long weekend. Until then. 

Mendoza Trip: City Day 1

We got to Mendoza around 3pm on Saturday. So first order of business was to find dinner. Mendoza has a huge history of immigration from Spain and Italy. Because of this, there are premade pasta shops everywhere. We decided to buy some premade Sorrentinos and Agnelotis, which are apparently only found in Argentina, basically oddly shaped ravioles, (sorry if I'm offending any Italian here), and their homemade red sauce. They were super yummy. Would highly recommend.

On Sunday, we began our Mendoza tour by stopping at the Central Market for some fruits and snacks. The place was deserted because we went at 8:30am in the morning. Our first stop to gawk was at the meat counter. Brains, tongue, intestines, pig skin, or any other organ imaginable to top off your shopping list? We've had this kind of exposure therapy before in Hong Kong, and I will say there it felt more extreme because alot of the markets were outside and it was hot and smelly with flies everywhere. This Central Market was indoors, and everything seemed very sanitary and organized.

The fruit stand we stopped at had all of the normal offerings, but, in addition, they had some goodies like the yellow plums we discovered on our first camping trip up the Valle de Maipo. The yellow plums are my new favorite fruit. Sweet and sour at the same time. Delightful. I also saw a crate full of these green beauties and had to ask the attendant what they were. Any guesses? Raw olives for making your own olive oil! No shit. I guess I've only ever seen brined olives, never fresh ones. You're telling me they don't grow with the little red bit stuffed in there? Jajaja

After the Central Market, we walked to the Parque General San Martin, which is humongous, about the same size as the entire downtown. You definitely need a game plan before exploring this park; otherwise, you can walk for miles inside it. We kept mostly to the eastern edge of the park, making our way from playground to playground, by a huge fountain, alongside the rowing lake, through a rose garden. It was lovely and the weather was perfect. 

Inside the park is a cute, little natural sciences and anthropology museum, called Museo Moyano that we explored for 45min or so. It's free, yay! 

The natural science side had a nice mix of fossils, animal skeletons, and nature dioramas. Got to learn more about some of the funky animals that live down in South America that we have had zero exposure to. Like this little guy. A tiny mole with armor on? It's actually a pink fairy armadillo that lives in the deserts and scrub lands of central Argentina. Ja!

The anthropological side had alot of info on native peoples of the Andes, artifacts, and such. One particular display I found interesting was this one on social castes in the 16th century, which labels children born from mixed race couples. There were so many different castes! And apparently they were very rigid. This is my North American ignorance talking, but not sure how anyone would be able to tell half of them apart. 

At this point we had been walking around for 7 hours, and the boys were ready for a break, plus we were all starving. Drew found a good steak place back in town that was known for good beef at reasonable prices. When in Rome, right? We got two huge cuts of meat, a ribeye and a flatiron, as well as a really nice Malbec by Saint Felicien 2023. Drew claims he did the conversion from grams to lbs wrong, and he didn't mean to order as much as we did, but I'm not sure I believe him. We finished the ribeye entirely, about 1 kg or 2.2 lbs, and about half the flatiron, another 900g. 

For our efforts, we were awarded prize heifer ribbons, aka fat kid awards. Apparently the only other person to achieve the same feat recently was a guy from Houston. No surprises there. Us Americans know how to chow.

Of course, after dinner, we weren't so full we couldn't have dessert, so we stopped by the gelato store next door. Best gelato I've had in ages. Another yummy reminder of the huge amount of Italian influence in Argentina. 

After dinner, we needed to walk it off a bit, so we went to Plaza Independencia for a final playground session and a quick sprint through the Museum of Modern Art. The boys became local celebrities at the playground; this pack of girls from ages 9-13 thought they were the cutest things ever. 

Mendoza Trip: The Drive

 Last Saturday to Tuesday, which was April 5-8, we took our visa activation trip to Mendoza. The timing was perfect, as we needed to leave Chile; our 90 days on our tourist visa expired on April 8th. And since we received our Temporary Residence Stamps last week, we needed to activate those within 90 days. So, we decided to take a trip to Mendoza, which is the easiest "big" city in Argentina to get to from Chile. 

We decided to take the bus, which is an 8 hour ride, for a couple of reasons. 1. We were too late in planning to buy an affordable plane ticket. 2. It would have been close to the same travel time anyways as flying. 3. The route takes you over the Andes mountains, and you even get to see Mt. Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in South America. 4. The boys love a good double decker bus. So away we went. The drive really was impressive. On the Chilean side, you go up a nice valley that feels reasonable and picturesque. There is a train track that goes the majority of the way up the valley as well, and you can see in the photo below how it weaves through tunnels alongside the river we were following.

Quite quickly, the road goes from reasonable to suddenly unreasonable, and you start going up switchback after switchback that take you up several thousand feet in not alot of distance. There are alot of semis going up this pass, and at one point, a semi in front of our bus started struggling really bad, going so slow that our bus actually stopped completely, and this made us stall. Somehow, our driver managed to start the bus back up and start moving forward again without the bus rolling back at all. I was having a mini-panic attack at this point but was very impressed with his driving skills to keep us going. Below is the screenshot of the google map showing all the turns, and below that is what it looked like in real life.

At the top of the switch backs is the Portillo Ski Resort, which is the yellow building in the photo below. It's supposed to be quite lovely, as it's right on a lake. Driving up those switchbacks in the winter time though would be a mission.

This photo below is near the top of the pass, right before we go into a 2-mile tunnel through the highest point of the pass that is technically the split between Chile and Argentina. They don't do any of the immigration in the tunnel though, for obvious reasons, so we drove through the tunnel and down another 10 minutes before we stopped at a building to go through Argentinian immigration. The Chilean immigration building for the opposite direction was before the tunnel, and when we drove past it on Saturday, there was a line of cars about 2 miles long waiting to go through. They were at a stand still; people were getting out the their cars and walking around. We were expecting to wait in a similar line when we came back through on Tuesday, but for whatever reason, we got super lucky, and there was no line at all! We breezed right into the main immigration building on the way back. I guess that's the difference between a Saturday and a Tuesday? Dunno. 

On the Argentinian side, after you go through the tunnel but before immigration, you can see Mt. Aconcagua, which is the snowy peak in the pic below. The pic doesn't do it justice at all; it looked very impressive. 

Once you're through immigration, you basically drive out a long valley that follows a different river on the other side of the divide. It was hard to imagine, but this side of the Andes was even drier than the Chilean side. We followed this slopping mesa down to the town of Uspallata, which looked very quaint, a little valley nestled amongst the mountains. Then you go through one more river gorge, and finally come out on the plains of Mendoza. It felt very much like driving down to Denver. Once you get there, the land is relatively flat, dry, and the mountains are in the west. The world makes sense again! Next blog on the city itself!