Mendoza Trip! Monday October 5

Well I guess I have a whole long weekend to fill you all in on! Here we go….

Tuesday:



We went to the train station and rode the train to the bus station. That all went fine, expect in our walk between the two stations, my friend Sara got her wallet stolen! Some lady bumped into her, and blocked her way while an accomplice took it out of her backpack. She didn’t realize what had happened until it was too late. But she handled it very well, and everything worked out.

I rode the bus with Sara, Macall, Constance, and Kendall. We were on a different bus than the rest of the group because we were the last to sign up. Probably 30 to 40 people from our program mobbed Mendoza!

When we got to the bus station it took a little while for us to find the right window to buy our tickets. At the bus station, the ticket says two different numbers, and there are a bunch of numbered parking spots. We could not figure out the system at all! But apparently the bus will pull up at a spot in the range printed on your ticket. We tried asking a bunch of people, but we never quite figured it out. Our subpar Spanish had us running back and forth. We got pretty worried considering we were out there only about 5 minutes before our train was supposed to leave. I thought there was no way the bus would’ve left early, but when it was 15 minutes after the scheduled time, somebody told us that it had already left. We were unhappy to say the least, until an employee of our same bus company told us that it would be there soon.

SO… we made it on the bus, and the rest of our trip was flawless. The food left something to be desired, but I still ate it all, and then some of the girls’ leftovers. After that I put on my ipod and slept all night! The bus is pretty comfy. It’s a double decker, and you get a seat that’s similar to a lazy boy. You can recline pretty far, and I had no trouble sleeping. We got into Mendoza the next morning.

Wednesday:



We arrived from the bus in the morning, and took a taxi to our hostel. It was a pretty nice hostel, I can’t complain. We all relaxed a little bit, and then we took a bike two of two different Wineries. It was pretty neat to see how everything works.

Some of my friends decided it would be a good idea to try this jump/ledge on the way back, and after Tyler stomped it, Damien went of and didn’t pop at all. His front tire went straight down into the ground and he flipped over the front of his handlebars. It was hilarious!! But we all made it back safely. Later that night we just rested up and hung out at the hostel. I feel bad for everyone else staying there cause we were in the courtyard area and were so loud!





Thursday:



Four of us guys just took it easy. We didn’t really want to spend a lot of money doing the excursions, so we trekked all the way to the supermarket and bought a bunch of food. We made it back and cooked up some eggs, bacon(?), and chorizo. All in one. It was SO GOOD! Then we just hung around the hostel for the day and made some pasta and grilled up some steak for dinner. Our adventures for Friday were cooking breakfast and dinner. That pretty much sums up Friday!

Friday: (pictures to come)

Ron, TJ, Cole and I went to the hot springs. We took a taxi to the bus station where we caught some public transportation to the mountains. We didn’t go deep into the mountains, but into this little valley. But we could see the big Andes on our way and they were pretty big and snowy. Some of the group went skiing, but I wasn’t ready to drop that kind of money for spring skiing. I kind of wish I did, but oh well.
We made it into our little valley and went into the hot springs. But first we walked across this little canyon on a pretty sketchy bridge. Oh, and then we went into the restaurant they had there and I had a burger. After that, we hopped in the tubs and chilled for a little while. There was a slide too which we had fun going down. The was a lazy river but it was super cold. So we were in the hot springs for a while and then we dove into the lazy river and took a whole miserable lap around as fast as we could. Except there was a fairly cool cave thing at the end.
After we got bored of that, we went down into the little valley and had some adventures.

Cole and I crossed the river down there (TJ and Ron wimped out) and sat on this little ledge and had a rock throwing contest. I lost. TJ and Ron were so jealous though. When it was time to come back we realized that the way we got there would not work to come back. So Cole walked up and down trying to find a spot while I just started throwing big rocks in the river to make my own path. Eventually my method worked, and we made it safely. (Except Cole had one wet shoe) When we made it back up to the hot springs we stopped and at a ton of “spaceships.” They were these flat, sugary bread things that we thought looked like UFOs. Then we went back and got in the hot springs for a little while. We took another lap in the lazy river, I have no idea why we kept doing that! Then we went to a little restaurant and ate some more food. I had the best quesadillas of my life, and also a Choripan Gigante. You can look up choripan, its pretty traditional Argentine food. There was also this huge dog that came up and freaked us all out. He looked like the monster dog from the Sandlot. His name was Oso…. Which means bear.

We got in the hot springs one more time before we left (We had all day!) and then dried off before we got on the bus.

The night was pretty tame, we just chilled at the hostel again. But Jack, Niles, Courtney, and Kelsey had been travelling on their own, and came to stay at our hostel that night. We did them a favor and let them stay with us, but Jack fell asleep in my tiny twin bed, on the top bunk. He was facing out so I literally wedged myself against the wall and tried to sleep. It was pretty uncomfortable, but I was trying to be a good friend.

Saturday:




Again we just kind of relaxed. We cleaned the place up, and got ready for the bus. We went on another search for food, and ended up at this place where I ordered a burger the size of my head… and I killed it. Then I showered and packed, and made my own pasta before heading to the bus. We rolled out and had a flawless bus trip. We made it home safe on Sunday, and I just did my homework! But overall it was an amazing trip! It was a ton of fun, relaxing, and we saw some cool sights. Most of all though, I got much closer with some of my friends here, and can’t wait for our adventures to continue!