The Big Trip: Argentina Part 1: Mendoza and Patagonia

After leaving Bolivia, we take the bus from the border to the Chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. This place, it has to be said, sucks and is only here as a tourist trap for those entering and leaving the country. It is a false town full of pricey hotels and boutique handicraft shops and American tourists who believe they are having an 'authentic' experience. We got the first bus we could out of there and over the border into Argentina.


After a couple of days in the pleasant and quite agreeable town of Salta we jumped aboard another overnight bus which took us south to Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina and a place I'd been looking forward to for months. Mendoza is a great place to relax and sample the delights of the fantastic wine and the famous lomo (Argentinian beef), and that's exactly what we did for the next few days.

One of the most fun things we did in Mendoza was the Bikes and Wines tour which is exactly what it says on the tin. We hired some bikes and were given a map describing a route that took in several vineyards in the Maipu valley. At each stop we were offered a tour around the vineyard followed by tastings of their favourite vintages. After the first vineyard we skipped the tours and went straight to the tastings. We tasted many fantastic wines especially the Malbec, the full-bodied red for which the region is famed for and yet somehow managed to return the bikes on time.

A friend and fellow wine enthusiast of ours Tracy, who we picked up on the way over from Chile, decided that it would be a great idea to go paragliding. So the next day, nursing rather sore heads, we headed for the hills where after a short briefing we strapped ourselves to an instructor and jumped off the hillside. It was a great feeling to be soaring above such beautiful landscape although at 15 minutes the flight was over too quickly for me. Still, it cleared the head.

A few more days enjoying the local cuisine and we were off to Bariloche in the northern part of Patagonia. Bariloche is an unbelievably picturesque village set in the foothills of the Andes and is very reminiscent of a Swiss alpine ski resort being also famed for it's chocolate and a nice line in St Bernards. In fact, amongst other outdoor activities, this place is an extremely popular skiing destination but we were here to clear our heads in the clean crisp mountain air before heading over to Buenos Aires.

After a couple of days walking in the mountains we were finally ready for the final chapter of our trip...



Stuff:
Currency - Peso, 3 to a dollar
Best Restaurant for Steak: Don Tristan in Mendoza



Some more books I've read in the past few weeks...



On The Way Down by Nick Hornby - A funny and poignant story of four strangers who meet on top of a building on New Years Eve intent on committing suicide.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett - Appallingly bad written book on the theme of Stockholm Syndrome, the relationships built up between a bunch of hostages and their captors. It's mind-numbingly soporific but somehow still managed to win an Orange award.

Paperweight by Stepehen Fry - A collection of his articles, transcripts and plays written for various publications and radio. Very funny and worth a read.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown - NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO and NO again !!!

Emergency Sex by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thompson - A beautifully written book about the experiences of three UN workers in various war-torn parts of the world in the early 1990s. Rewarding and inspirational stuff.

100 Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Or 100 years of boredom. Look, this is one of the most beautifully written books you will ever read charting the birth, rise and fall of a fictional town Macondo over a hundred years. But it is difficult to read in that almost all of the characters share the same name and the central theme of the cyclical nature of reality means that it feels repetative and rambling at times, there's even one sentence that spans two pages! Wierd and wonderful magic realism.

Popcorn by Ben Elton - In this book, Elton is inspired by Tarantino and Natural Born Killers to discuss the question of whether life imitates art or vice-versa whilst also satirising the modern day blame culture. Excellent book for the beach.