Mendoza
Mendoza is a rather big city which we arrived to after driving several hours through flat dry land with a few trees and but mostly bushes . But who cares about the landscape getting boring after two minutes when you are on 1st class!!! I am normally not much for long trips anywhere, but 14 hours in a bus is simply not an issue, when you can lie down fully and get a somewhat decent night’s sleep. The wine and champagne was certainly also appreciated!
Mendoza feels rather
small. It is a charming city with few buildings higher than 2-3 stories. It has
trees on both sides of almost every single road kept alive via intricate
irrigation systems. There are several well groomed plazas with fountains,
flowers and mosaic filled structures. All in all it is very picturesque and
with a slightly countryside feeling, which invites you to just take a stroll and
enjoy the town and the hot dry
climate.
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| Irrigation systems like this run all over Mendoza |
Besides the plazas
there aren’t a lot of actual sights in Mendoza as the major tourism is wine
tourism (Mendoza is one of the most important wine regions in the world) or adventure trips into the Andes.
So we didn’t really
feel obliged to do anything but chill…except painting of course. The ever
returning itch felt by my better half. No more than two consecutive days passes
before he starts exhibiting withdrawal symptoms – and not even that long when
it is a new city.
We stayed at Hostal
Simplemente. The owner Ignacio is a super friendly and very service minded
young guy, and he let us paint a wall in the terrace (which took the edge of
the withdrawal). On the back wall he is mounting empty wine bottles that look to
be held up by gravity only, and we painted a character to go with it.
A local artist told
us about a legal spot in the middle of the city, which we went to paint one
morning before going on a wine/olive oil tour. It turned out to be a large area
including an abandoned old train station. The heat and dry dirt made it feel like
something out of an old western movie. With the Andes as a backdrop it was definitely
an impressive area. We painted a quick trash train and a wall inside an old
ruin on the site. A fire in the room had left delicate subtle patterns in verdigris
green and black.
And then suddenly a
small group came by and started a photo shoot with us as the backdrop! If you
ever stumble upon an ad for skanky polyester clothes check if we are in it
somewhere!
We only did two
touristy events while there. The first one was a wine and olive oil tour. I seriously
considered a high end gourmet wine tour, but I didn’t have it in me to part
with that much money when only one of us was really interested in it and this
one doesn’t really know much about wine and only brought clothes she wouldn’t mind
getting paint on. So we took a low
budget one instead. The wine part was not much more than a rough sketch of the
method. But the olive oil factory was super cool! It was a small factory so all
processed were done by hand with the aid of cool looking old school simple machinery
only. And the products made from it were
delicious!
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| The tourist company with the trusty name. |
The other tourist event was a go at the classic argentine asado or barbecue! This is one of the absolute highlights of the entire trip so far (at least for not non-artist part of the crew)!!! We went to Caro Pepe a huge cantina looking restaurant with an all-you-can eat buffet of either a range of cold salads or cooked vegetables, cold meats, fresh pasta fried with your choice of sauce right in front of you…..and the asado. Which is simply just a big ass grill with several different cuts of meat and a chef devoted to the perfect roasting of it. And it is good!!! Soooo incredibly good! The meat was thirst-quenchingly juicy! Both of us passed out in a blissful meat induced coma that night. And considering the quality it was dirt cheap. This will be repeated if any way possible.
Thank you very much
to the owner of Hostal Simplemente. Also hats off to the staff and a select handful
of visitors who cooked up a great asado, supplied us with insight about Argentina
and Chile and provided us with great company. Last but not least, a big thank
you to Formatbrain for the tip on the painting spot!
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| Ignacio and Exequiel |