Two Beers and a Pretzel

I’m in Cusco, Peru now, but figured everyone might like to hear about the festivals in Mendoza.

What a wonderful festival.  Oddly, there wasn’t much wine available, but Between the Italian festival on Thursday and the parade on Friday, I had a good time…

Plaza de Indepencia has a massive illuminated sign for the city - it was also the center of all the festivals.

At the Italian festival, these girls in the ticket line with me insisted that the only gringo in sight take their picture.  I had one of me with them, but it didn’t turn out…

The Italian festival was annoyingly disorganized - odd for Italians…

The next day was the opening parade for the Vendimia festival.  I went with a few Irish from my hostel, then promptly lost them when I stopped to video people in grape costumes dancing.

However, I wasn’t lonely for long…  this parade introduces all the candidates for Miss Vendimia 2009 to the public - so I met a number of them right up untill they had to get on the floats…

The girl to my right in this next pic wanted to meet afterward (5 hours later), but I couldn’t find her again…

And on e more that turned out decent… (it’s amazing how when you give someone a camera and tell them to “just hit that button” that they mess with everything and can’t take a decent picture).

I really liked this city, and loved Argentina.

I’ll try to go back over my receipts and see if I saved money versus a tour thru HI-Travel.  They wanted $1900 USD for 21 days in Argentina and Chile (appx $90/day) - not including meals.  I ended up staying about 33 days and think I ended up closer to $2300 total, but  including all meals ($70/day).

Yes, I got a haircut… and I need to shave…

Now, for an excerpt from my favorite four book trilogy that is related to today’s events…

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying:

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.

Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.

This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float and bob. Ignore all considerations of your own weight and simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.
They are most likely to say something along the lines of, ‘Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!’
It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly. DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.

When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve. You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it was going to anyway.You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly cock up, and cock up badly, on your first attempt.

There are private flying clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitch-hikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.

— Douglas Adams, ‘The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy,’

FYI:  The Hollywood movie was horrible if you loved the books (but the girl playing Trillian was cute) - watch the old BBC TV production for the unedited humor.

Anyway….

Mario owns the hostel where I’m staying, and Parapente Mendoza. When I found out, I just had to try Para-sailing.  I went today around 3:30 in the afternoon.  I got video and pics from both of my camera’s - leaving the Olympus in Mario’s hands on the ground, and taking the time-lapse-able Canon with me.  I made a pretty cool video, but the first time-laps section is very jittery - the camera strap got tangled in the harness during take off.  I left that clip in because it gives you a good idea how my stomach felt - jumping off a perfectly good mountain…

For those of you completely lacking the patience to watch a 4 minute video, here are the pics…

We were about 1 kilometer above the city on a hill with TV and radio towers.

Strapped in to the harness…

Takeoff went well.  There was a strong wind up there…

The view from the launch site…

And looking back at the launch site…

And looking back at me from the launch site.

The views were amazing (I need a new word).

Now for a hearty dinner and some vino.  The Vendimia wine harvest festival officially begins tomorrow, but this town is already partying…

Today I took a 10 hour driving tour (in Spanish) to see Cerro Aconcagua and the ‘Christ the Redeemer of the Andes’ statue.

A valley not dissimilar to the Western parts of the Yosemite valley takes you West of Mendoza to view Aconcagua.  This mountain is HUGE…  6,962m or 22,841 ft.  We viewed it from a vista at about 2900m and probably a dozen kilometers away.

If you look just at the lower peak, the large ice shelf is about 300m thick.

Then we drove up a very windy gravel road to just under 4000m to the ‘Christ the Redeemer of the Andes’ statue.  The statue was raised in 1904 on the Border after a treaty between Chile and Argentina regarding where the actual border is…

I had a hot chocolate served by the happy staff.

On the way back we stopped by an Inca mineral mine where sulfur leaches out old volcanic pools.  I’d hate to be the guy who had to haul Sulfur back to Cuzco…

There was a market with tons of geode’s and volcanic minerals along with Inca-like clothing, but my favorite crowd shot of the day was a guy doing the thinking man pose…

Finally, the full color of the mountains was exposed on the way back to Mendoza…

Red, Green, Orange, Brown, and a blue sky all in one pic…

And all in one mountain…

And a neat erosion pattern…

The guy who owns the hostel also runs a paragliding company… so guess what I’m doing tomorrow?!?!?!

Jeez, my knees hurt.  That fall on the mountain bike the other day was pretty hard…  I’m really lucky to not have anything broken.  Other than that, I somehow managed to catch a cold the other day, which is now in it’s final stages.

It was raining in Bariloche and I was in pain, so I left.  I said goodbye to Erin & Katie at the bus terminal (they’re going to Buenos Aires) and caught a pretty nice recliner-seat bus to Mendoza.  I arrived at 8 AM this morning in Mendoza after a decent 18 hour bus ride on the Andesmar bus line.  Better food than QueBus, and they played decent movies (Transformers, The Untouchables - both en ingles, and a pretty good Argentine Indie flick with english subtitles).  I saw a guy from the bus trip from Ushuia to Calafate and we talked for a bit.  It’s still funny running into people you know from somewhere 1000 miles ago…

At the bus station I had no idea where I was going to stay.  A guy names Marcos gave me a brochure for his hostel.  It looked pretty nice, and it’s $10 USD per night.  He drove me to the place and it was nice with immediate room available (where the more popular hostels have 2PM check-in times).  So I paid for a night, booked a wine tour in the afternoon and set out for a much needed nap.

The tour bus came to pick me up around 2:45 PM.  It took a group of about 12 to the nearby city of Maupi where we toured a number of places…

First stop was a family owned distillery.  The owner descended from swiss parents, so he had a number of European recipe liquors.  Vodka, Whiskey, Schnapps (including Kirshvasser), Absynthe, and a number of chocolate liquers.  He also made home made salsas, jams, and chocolates.  During the tasting I tried his “Russian Death” shot - a spicy peppered vodka that tasted kind of like cinnamon schnapps, but hotter. It seemed to me that this guy turned his hobby into a viable job.  He was excited and immensely proud of everything in the place - as he should be, it was all pretty good.

Then we stopped at a small family vineyard that did specialty small batch vintages and had very good Malbec.  I bought some Vino for dinner tomorrow.  Not much worth photographing though…

From there we went to another small, family owned business that made olive oil…  pretty neat, as I had never seen olive oil production before, and we got some artesan bread to try the oil with.

Finally, we went to the largest winery in the valley.  I got a private tour as the only English speaker.  Nice facility, but the wine is targeted at mass markets, so it’s not very complex, and tastes “thin” to me.  They did have a pretty cool room that you could rent for events…  Lined with French Oak barrels from 1910.

Back at the hostel, Marcos drove me to a neat area in the center of town so I could find a place to eat.  He told me it was safe to walk back to the hostel (about 3km).  I chose a place with Bife de Chorizo.  It was one monster piece of meat plus beer for $10.  Easily the size of your average meat-loaf.

So tomorrow is a business day.  I have to square away my ticket to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu (probably the 13th-16th), when I’m going to Bolivia and lake Titikaka (and the beautiful salt flats that are about to be destroyed to make lithium batteries for electric cars), if I stay in Mendoza for the Vendimia wine festival that starts on Thursday, and where I go after South America…

San Carlos de Bariloche is in the center of Argentina’s ‘Lake District’, is a tourist magnet, and is beautiful.  The town is unabashedly touristy, which I find more palatable than the comercialized hippie utopia like El Bolson.  Bariloche has a stunning array of chocolate makers and some pretty darn good Italian gelato-style ice cream.  The top ranked chocolatier im Mamuschka - where they apparently have participated in world events as important as WWII Paris peace talks and Einstein’s theory of relativity…

So after getting to town on the 26th and meeting Erin & Katie again, we explored the town a bit and chilled out at the hostel to get ready for Kayaking on Friday.  We booked a 1/2 day for about $40 each in tandem Kayaks across the clearest, darkest blue lake I’ve ever been on.

Erin & Katie were paired up.

I was matched with a rather robust german woman named Ingrid.

We paddled out for about 90 minutes to a beach on a point, had coffee and cookies, chilled on the beach, then paddled back into a headwind.

Now for “Blood Runs Red on the Highway”…

Today (Feb 28th), we went mountain biking around a 30 km circuit thru the lake district with some stunning vistas, gut wrenching uphill climbs and some long and fast downhill runs.

I had bike issues…  loose handlebars, no usable first gear… then with about 8 km left to go, I had a massive, truly dangerous wipeout.  I was going down a huge paved hill and I passed from the light into the shade just as the potholes started and I was going too fast to avoid it.  I’d estimate that I was going about 40 kmh when I hit a pothole and the front wheel bent enough for me to lose control.  I hit another chuckhole and may have gone airborne.  I slid off the road and flipped over.  I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, but the rear tire was mangled.  Erin and Katie were surprized that I was standing up again after flipping over into a bush.  Luckilly I was wearing a helmet.  We don’t have a photo, but I re-enacted it back at the bike shop (happy that I didn’t have a concussion).  Note the severely bent rear tire.

I had to pay about $150 pesos for both bent rims and the bike shop dog bit me as I went in the back to clean up.  I slowly came out of shock and started remembering details of the crash.  Then the owner of the bike shop gave a video testimonial that I had done the most damage to one of his bikes that he’s ever seen…