Argentina!

  Mendoza, Argentina
Saturday, November 11, 2006

After the goodbyes at Santiago airport, I immediately boarded a bus to Mendoza, in Argentina. A beautifull Andes crossing and a passport stamp later, I am now in this nice town at the border of Aconcagua, the highest mountain of South America (6928m).

01 Chile-Argentina border

The first days I havenīt done much more than walking around town, reading my book and enjoying the mediterranean (how can anybody know how to spell this correctly??) climate in the nice garden of the hotel. One exception was the night I went climbing in the local climbing hall. Not so big and rather primitive, but nice to be able to practice a bit again. There I met this Argentinian guy, whose grandparents lived in Ghent, the city where I live back in Belgium.

05 Wine and bike

Friday it was time for some more action again and I went on a wine and bike tour. The wine was nice, the group good, but the biking was a bit of a disappointment. I had expected to go biking between the vineyards on picturesque (another impossible word to spell) roads with views on the Andes but it was more trying to survive on the side of a bad and busy road and the view on the Andes was only once in a while available, between that big truck on the left and the dead dog on the right.

07 Asado

At night there was a big asado at the hostal, my first of undoubtably many here in Argentina. An asado is a BBQ, by the way, and the favourite passtime of Argentinians. A group of Germans of the wine and bike tour was present as well as two Belgians. The first Belgians I've met on this trip by the way (en dan nog Westvlamingen ook!). It was rather strange to be speaking dutch to fellow tourists but after an hour I spoke fluent Westvlaams. When the Belgians left, I joined the Germans and we had a great time singing clearly very popular German songs of which I dinīt know any. A nice night!