Córdoba (March 21st - 23rd)

Saturday, March 21st 2015

Amazingly we slept pretty well on the semi-cama bus! We woke up when the sun was rising and we were about an hour away. We were surprised to see when we looked out that the landscape was much more green than the Mendoza area. We had expected more desert, but I guess since we are further inland away from the Andes, we are no longer in the rain shadow. And it rained overnight bringing a cool and comfortable day today. 

Our bus was double decker Andesmar (company name) bus, which tend to be nice buses. And it definitely was, as it is the only semi-cama bus we've ever gotten sleep in! (Cama = bed) The last few minutes coming into town, the driver was blasting through the streets and scraping the top of the bus pretty good with all the low hanging tree branches. He didn't seem to be concerned or make any effort to slow down, and it sounded pretty bad! Then all of a sudden the glass emergency exit roof hatch shattered directly above us and all the debris came raining down! It mostly got Jeff, since he was seated on the aisle. We are luckily lucky neither of us was seriously injured, just one scrape on Jeff's arm. It was pretty crazy, scared the crap out of us! I guess that bus will be out of service for awhile. Or at least I hope it will be!

We are staying at Baluch Backpacker Hostel. It was about a 15 minute walk to get here from the terminal. And we are right in the center of town. During the day our street is a pedestrian only street and at night the cars are allowed back in. Several blocks surrounding the center are like this, and it makes the area feel like a mall, because the streets are lined with shops and vendors. There are also corridors running through the city blocks so that each blocks has the outside stores that face the street, but also some indoor ones, making each block into its own mall. There are so many shops and people that it's hard to move through the streets! And there is constant shouting as people advertise what they are selling, such as light bulbs or umbrellas. I can't imagine yelling umbrella (paraguas) all day long. That guy must dream of umbrellas!

<hideous platform shoes are really popular here, and shoes stores seem to occupy at least a quarter of all the retail space!>

<this shows the less busy area of the street that we could see from our hostel>

The hostel it self is in a cool old building. I'm not sure how old it is, maybe late 1800s or early 1900s. It has an open air concept like many of the traditional buildings in the warmer cities do. It also has large dorm rooms with high ceiling and balconies. It takes up 4 floors, the top floor is a rooftop deck overlooking the city and the lowest floor has two private apartments that can be rented out for little more than the dorms cost. We almost went for the apartment but after a few minutes in there we decided we couldn't take the constant noise from the street below of the man trying to sell umbrellas! So we are in dorms again, (3 floors up from the street) which we have come to feel quite comfortable in!

We took it easy today, spending a lot of the day in the hostel. We ventured out for awhile around lunch time to go to a vegetarian buffet (pay by weight) restaurant. The restaurant is called Verde Siempre (Always Green) and is another one I found on Happy Cow. It's not 100% vegan, it's vegetarian, but there were many nice options for me. We only had to walk 3 blocks to get there, but it was peak shopping hour and it was quite overwhelming to sift through all the people and vendors to get there! It felt like a war zone and you had to run though as quickly as possible to avoid injury! The restaurant was a safe haven on the second floor above the street! We piled our plates high with corn pie, oven potatoes, roasted veggies, stir fry and salad. It was fantastic food! All of these veggie buffet places seem to be really good, and I will miss them when we go home! Just about every town we have been to so far has had a restaurant like this.

After lunch we went to the market to look for fruits and vegetables. The market was very similar to the one in Mendoza. Lots of vendors selling all kinds of strange things from stalls under one large airplane hanger like roof. You could buy a whole pig or goat in this place. They were quite gross to look out! You could also buy bulk foods and spices, produce baked goods, fast food and there were a number of restaurants as well. We got 2 corns, one red onion, a peach, a pear, an apple, a really cool quadruple kiwi, an avocado, two bananas and two grapefruits for about $5. 

<$5 worth of produce. It was all worth it for the mutant kiwi!>

After the market we hurried back to the hostel wanting badly to be out of crowds. By this time (about 2) most of the stores were closing up. They all have garage/storage style door that roll down from the ceiling completely blocking the view into the store. It gives the streets an eerie deserted feel with endless views of sheet metal. But just when we thought it would become a ghost town more vendors appeared out of nowhere and laid down blankets in the streets and displayed their wares! This place is crazy!

<view from our hostel once all the shops closed and the blankets came out.>

For dinner we had brown rice salad with corn, avocado, tomatoes and purple onion. Tomorrow we will have nice fruit salad instead of the hostel breakfast. We figure we probably won't be doing a whole lot more hiking since we will mostly be in cities now, so we better start eating better!

After dinner we took a walk along the river. It was a kind of depressing area. The river no longer has a natural bank, it's all concrete, and polluted with lots of trash. And the concrete was broken up and crumbling. Even so, it was interesting and we walked for about an hour on a nicely maintained bicycle path.

Sunday, March 22nd 2015

Today was a boring day with nothing much of interest to report. We had leftover brown rice mixed with fruit and hostel corn flakes for breakfast, then sat around the hostel for awhile. We went out in hopes of finding a restaurant that would be open and have vegetarian food. We were unsuccessful. Just about everything has been closed all because it is Sunday. However there were about a 20 bakeries open! And we succumbed to temptation and shared the largest alfajor we have ever seen!

<for some reason it looks small in the photo, but it was as big as a hamburger!>

<empty streets on Sunday>

After that we walked to the bus station to try to order vegetarian food for our bus ride to Salta. We were able to buy the bus tickets in our hostel, but they weren't able to select meal choices. Salta is our farthest North destination. We plan the rent a car and explore the surrounding mountains and canyons.

At the bus station we were told there was no vegetarian option, which was disappointing because we'd chosen to go on the more expensive cama bus, but with a different bus company, Chevallier! No good! Next time we'll stick with Andesmar.

For some reason there is a grocery store in the bus terminal, which the full selection, including butcher shop! So we bought a bunch of junk food and sat on the steps outside and ate our "lunch," honey roasted peanuts, whole wheat rolls and lays french fries potato sticks.

<I don't know why Lay's doesn't sell these french fry sticks in the US, they are good! They are extremely popular here on top of hotdogs with mayo and ketchup, they call it s super pancho!>

The rest of the day was spent back at the hostel. We had lentil, polenta and veggie stew for dinner. We were lucky to find a produce stand open earlier in the day to get the veggies, because even the grocery store is closed! We already had the lentils and polenta luckily. After dinner we repacked our bags for our departure tomorrow.

Monday, March 23rd 2015

It turns out today is a holiday, and tomorrow is too! So nothing was open again! Apparently the president recently created a bunch of extra holidays to make sure that there is at least one 3 day weekend per month and to promote in country tourism at the same time. I don't really understand the in country tourism part, because tourists tend to want to shop and eat. How are they supposed to do those things when everything is closed!?

We ate polenta and fruit today mixed with hostel corn flakes. We then sat around the hostel until 10:30 check out time and stored our bags. Our bus didn't leave until 8:15pm, so we had a bunch of time to kill. We walked around town looking at the various parks and historic buildings. We also walked to a number of restaurants, none of which were open. In some of the more touristy areas, we found a few open restaurants, but they all seemed to be boring sandwich shops. So we ended up eating a bunch of junk again today. We bought some candied peanuts from a street vendor, along with some waffle cone roll ups stuffed with dulce de leche. A little while later we had a terrible apple from another street vendor. We walked for several more hours and found nothing to eat and gave in and went back into a bakery where we had alfajores, macaroons and wheat rolls.

<In Plaza San Martin looking toward San Martin Street at the Cathedral and the statue of San Martin!>

<Iglesias Cabildo built in 1577>

<Jesuit block dates back to the 1700s>

<more empty streets on the made up holiday>

<food of desperation! Rolled up waffle cones filled with dulce de leche>

<there was anti Monsanto graffiti all over the city>

<acacia lined canal street, very pretty>

<palace of justice>

<Cool neo-gothic church from 1934, they left one steeple off during construction to symbolize human imperfection>

<inside the church>

Yesterday during our walk we discovered a cinema. I always remember going to the movies when I lived in Panamá an what a great escape it was! You could get out of your own world for a few hours, away from all the Spanish speaking, and forget you weren't at home! So we decided that would be a good way to spend the afternoon today. There are 8 screens in the theater. And it is housed in a neat old building that must take up most of a city block. There was one movie in English with Spanish subtitles, the rest are dubbed over in Spanish. So we chose the one English movie "Directo al Corazón." That translates to: Direct to the Heart. I don't know if that's the name in the US or not. We are completely disconnected from current movies down here. It was a pretty good movie and got us out of Argentina for awhile! They also sold beer! So we had beer and kettle corn! In total it cost about $17 for the tickets and food. A good value compared to the US. I can't believe how expensive it has gotten to go to the movies back home!

<a panorama of the movie theater, couldn't get it all in one shot. There are snippets of car moving in the bottom of the photo>

After the movie we retuned to our hostel to have a quick dinner and collect our stored bags. In our endless wandering today we managed to find a little grocery store that was open! So we had corn on the cob and a coleslaw salad with canned garbanzo beans mixed in. 

After a 30 minute walk with all of our stuff we made it to the bus station. Another day behind us. We are happy to be leaving. We unfortunately arrived here at the wrong time! I guess we are just lucky we didn't stay in Mendoza another day, or else we would have arrived to Córdoba and spent the Monday and Tuesday holidays here! We are also lucky that the temperature was cool and comfortable during our stay, never going over about 65. We heard it was sweltering hot last week, as is the norm.

Now we have a 12 hour ride on the cama bus ahead of us.

Mendoza (March 16th - 20th)

Monday, March 16th 2015

We arrived to Mendoza around 9 AM from our overnight bus from San Martin. We slept pretty well in the cama bus. The seats recline to a 160 degree angle and have a leg rest making it a very similar seat to a lounge chair. We also got a good meal before going to sleep! When we purchased tickets, I asked if it was possible to get a vegetarian meal, and to our surprise, the answer was yes! So we were served a tomato and herb salad, a potato tart, some bread, warm spinach crepes and two glasses of wine! It was great! I hope we will have more nice vegetarian bus meals in our future! We have 3 more long bus rides before our trip is over.

From the bus terminal we walked to our hostel, Square Independencia Hostel, which is located on the main city park, Plaza Independencia. We arrived just before 10, and they invited us to enjoy breakfast, even though we hadn't stayed the night before. We had oranges, cornflakes and bread. 

When we were checking in we noticed there would be a free city tour at 10:30, so we decided to go on it. The Australians we met in Bariloche happened to be on the same tour! It's strange how often you see the same people when traveling down here. We often see the same people over and over, even if we haven't talked to them, we still recognize them from bus rides, hostels and hikes.

The tour lasted about two hours and we learned a little about the history of Mendoza. The town was destroyed in 1861 by a massive earthquake. They rebuilt the town a little way away from the ruins and designed this elaborate network of canals to run through the city and irrigate 1,000s of trees! They also made the streets and sidewalks wider than in any other Argentine city, so there would be space foi rubble to fall should there be another earthquake. Every street you walk on in town has a canal running alongside it and every street is lined with gorgeous old trees. They also made the streets form a perfect grid around a central plaza that takes up 4 whole city blocks. Two blocks out from the center are four more equally spaced 1 block plazas. All of the plazas have fountains and statues and benches and tons of huge trees. All of the trees were an important part of making Mendoza a livable city, it gets really hot here in summer, and the trees are supposed to help keep the city cool. The network of canals and the number of trees are truly amazing, and make Mendoza a very pretty city. The surrounding area is very dry, so Mendoza is essentially an oasis in the desert.

We also learned on the city tour that because it gets so hot in Mendoza, they take siesta time more seriously than anywhere we have been so far. The town literally shuts down from 1-5. The schools even take a break! So everyone goes home for lunch. They eat lunch around 2 or 3 and nap until 5, when it's time to go back to where they came from for a few more hours. Dinner is not normally until 10, and nightclubs open after midnight!

After the tour we went to the grocery store, then returned to the hostel for lunch. We had sandwiches on whole grain bread (baked by the tea house in Villa La Angostura) with fork smashed hummus and veggies and a salad (lettuce, tomato, red bell pepper, carrot, beet, avocado, lettuce and peaches) with red wine vinegar.

A nice lunch! Just vinegar makes a surprisingly nice salad dressing!

After lunch we wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out what we wanted to do over the next few days. We really want to go to Parque Provincial Aconcagua. Aconcagua is the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere at 22,840+ feet. It's really popular for trekking, because there are certain routes to the top that aren't very technical and you can actually hike the whole way. People pay a lot of money to go on guided trips to the top that take about 2 1/2 weeks. They hike slowly and double hike (doing the same trip twice, each with a different load of gear) to acclimate. These trips also include all food and the use of mules to make it easier, even so about 60% of hikers have to turn back because of the altitude. 

We don't want to go to the top, and the season for that is over anyway. We just want to go hike around the base. We originally thought we would rent a car and drive ourselves to the park, but we found out from the city tour guide that it's a 4 hour drive each way! We figured that it wouldn't be much fun to do in a day and it would be expensive to keep the car for multiple days. We couldn't find much information online about hiking in the park, such as trail maps or route options, just companies that wanted to sell guided hikes. Apparently it's not so common to just go on your own to hike! Most people just see the view of the mountain from the road and are satisfied. We finally gave up searching and went to the tourist office and got all the information we needed.

To go hiking in Aconcagua you are required to buy a costly permit. There are options for 1, 3 and 7 days. We decided to go with 3 days, and it cost 1150 pesos!! That comes out to $92.75 per person at our current blue dollar exchange rate. There are a lot of tourists that don't have US dollars, and have to pay for everything at the official exchange rate, so this would be incredibly expensive for them! I guess the one good thing about the high cost is that it deters a lot of bozos! Of course Argentineans pay about 30% of what foreigners are required to pay.

The office for Aconcagua park is on the second floor of the same building that houses the tourist office. We had to first sit at computers and fill out a form to "apply" for a permit. Once they had all our information, including blood type, they printed out a bill for the 1150 pesos. We then had to take the bill to a nearby bill pay center and stand in line along side locals that we there paying various types of other bills, like phone and electricity. Once we had the receipt of payment it was back to the park office to obtain the actual permit. The permit itself was an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of heavy card stock  type paper that has perforations dividing it into 3 pieces. We are to turn in one piece of the permit at a time at various check points along the trail. Park visits are very heavily controlled. I think the reason for this is that it gets crazy during peak climbing season, but luckily climbing season is over! If it was free to get in, the place would be over run with trekkers and climbers. The climbing permits are insanely more expensive!

Once we were all squared away with permits we walked to the bus terminal to buy our tickets to the park. We decided to take one more day in town and begin the hike on Wednesday. There is only one company that makes the trip up there. Luckily the tickets were pretty reasonably priced, 132 peso per round trip, or about $10. Not bad for a 4 hour ride. The park is located in the Andes Mountains at the top of the highway pass between Mendoza and Santiago, Chile.

On the walk back from the bus terminal we found a vegetable store and stopped in for a few things for dinner. I made a big pot of brown rice, lentils, carrots, onion, and red and green bell pepper. Over dinner we enjoyed the free wine that is provided each night by our hostel!

A statue to General San Martin, he is the hero that freed Argentina and a few other countries from Spain, As a result, the main street in every Argentine town is named San Martin, and every city has AT LEAST one monument to him.

Mendoza's very own empire state building.

A view of Mendoza from the 8th floor of the City Hall building, it's very green!

More view of Mendoza

Plaza Independencia

Tuesday, March 17th 2015

This morning I ate way too much free breakfast! This hostel has sweetened cocoa powder, and when mixed with water makes a real nice base for cereal! So we bought bananas to go with the free cornflakes and each had a big bowl of that and plently of the provided orange slices.  Where I went wrong was with the croissants! And these aren't your average croissants, they are like donuts, glazed with sugar and then an additional sprinkling of sugar is added to the glaze! Before I knew it I had eaten 5 of them with jam!! So much for keeping up my healthy eating down here. I must say Jeff never goes as crazy as I do, and on days like this, we spend the rest of the day trying to make up for it! 

Before we came on this trip we went out to eat with our friends Jeff and Terry. We met them two years ago when we were hiking the W trek in Torres Del Paine. They happen to also be from New Jersey. They had been vegetarians for 25 years when we met them, and they are the reason I am now vegetarian. I had always been interested in being vegetarian for the environmental benefits, and because I never really cared for meat a whole lot, but I was always to lazy to actaully try it out long term. I guess I didn't know enough about it to really motivate me to stick with it. They told me to watch Forks Over Knives, and although it took me almost a year to get around to it, I have been vegen ever since, and have them to thank for it! Any way, while we were out to lunch before leaving we were talking about trying to be vegan in Argentina. Terry eats mostly vegan at home, but leans more toward vegatarian when traveling because its just so much easier to find vegetarian food than vegan food. I told her I wanted to stay vegan and not eat white bread in Argentina! She told me I was gonna end of eating everything, and I hate to say it but she was right! I only lasted about 3 weeks with my high standard of eating! I have been eating probably 95% vegan, its the baked goods that cause me to stray! I still cannot bring myself to eat cheese though.  Perhaps I can do the baked goods because I can't actually see the dairy products!

So after that breakfast many hours walking were needed! We first went to get bus tickets for our next destination, Cordoba. We want to leave as soon as we get back from Aconcagua on an overnight bus. Unfortunately this means we are forced to take a semi cama bus (seat is not as nice and only reclines to 140 degrees) that does not include meals!! The bus will leave at 10:30 PM on Friday the 20th and gives us 2 hours in town between trips.

We decided to take the rest of our exercise at San Martin Park, a huge green space West of the center. All of the trees were planted in the late 1800s and in some areas they have grown so thick (reproduced) that there is now forest where there should be desert! We had considered going on a DIY bicycle tour of some of the surrounding winerys, but we decided we don't really care to learn much more about wine. We went on a tour last time we were in Mendoza and didn't find it all that interesting. Most wines, regardless of price/quality taste pretty similar to us. And Jeff didn't want to spend the day in full sun when we will be doing just that for the next three days at Aconcagua. We really enjoyed the park and all of its incredibly beautiful trees. We also walked to the top of a hill in the park called Cerro de la Gloria. It is the highest point in Mendoza City, and at the top is a statue of none other than San Martin!

We walked around til almost 3 and just barely made it to the vegan buffet before it closed! The restaurant is called Cuenco and is 100% vegan! Sadly it is only open 12-3, so today was our only opportunity to eat there! This is another restaurant we have found with the help of Happy Cow. You fill up your plate with whatever you want and then you pay by weight. I like it better than an all you can eat buffet, because you don'y feel compelled to overeat in order to get your moneys worth!! Everything we tried was fantastic and just about the best food we have had on this trip! It's a shame we won't get to go back!

After lunch we went to the central market, which is like a permanent farmers market located in a big building on the main street. Inside there are stalls selling all sorts of things, some have prepared foods, some have bulk foods and spices, canned goods, there is produce and lots of meat, cheeses and olives. We were able to find peanut butter at one of the bulk foods stalls! It is made in Argentina by the peanut king!! We also stocked up on produce for dinner and for our trip.

Made in Argentina, apparently someone in Argentina likes peanut butter! The brand name means peanut king!!

Even though lunch was not all you can eat, we still ate A LOT, so dinner was fruit salad! We never get sick of the fresh peaches and pears down here! Plus it is super hot here, the hottest place we have been, so a cold dinner was perfect!

The entrance gate to San Martin Park

Tree lined avenue and canal in San Martin Park.

There was a section of the park dedicated to native drought tolerant plants. Here is me with a very large agave. Jeff and I planted one of these in my mom's front yard. Maybe one day it will be this big!

The native vegetation is very similar to San Diego vegetation, cactus, agave, california pepper trees and mesquite trees.

Monument to San Martin at the top of Cerro de la Gloria in San Martin Park.

View west of the pre-Andes from Cerro de la Gloria

One of the prettiest streets in the park, line with sycamores. You can see water running in the canal on the left.

One more gorgeous tree lined street

Wednesday, March 18th 2015 <Aconcagua Day 1>

This morning I ate only oranges and corn flakes! I promised myself yesterday I wouldn't have croissants or rolls! Then we stored a bag at our hostel and left for the bus terminal with as little as possible. Just like always my bag was heavy with food! The bus left at 10:15 and took 4 hours, just like the city tour guide said it would. It ended up being a nice double decker bus with air conditioning and we had the front row seats of the second floor! We didn't know it would be a double decker and we didn't pick the seats, so we were just lucky! It was nice to have those seats as it was a very scenic ride up the mountain pass to the park.  It could have been a much faster ride, but we took all these crazy detours off the highway to pick up and drop off people and also the bus seemed to stop anywhere it was flagged down, even if that happened to be in the middle of the road. We would pull into a small town at a bus terminal pick up people, then less than 1/4 mile down the road there would be people flagging down the bus! Why couldn't they just go to the terminal!? It was a little frustrating! In areas where the double decker couldn't fit through the tree lined streets with low hanging branches, the driver just blew though anyway, not even so much as slowing down. Sure made nasty scraping noises on the roof!

View of the highway heading West into the pass. There were amazing colored mountains the whole way.

View of more colorful moutains and the highway.

A curvy stretch of highway with tunnels

At one point we had to stop on the highway for gauchos or cowboys herding cattle!

The dogs are in charge of the stragglers!

It was 2:15 by the time we were finally off the bus. The visitor center is located right off the highway near the top of the pass. We went inside to turn in the first section of our permit. They issued us a numbered garbage bag in which they would like us to store all of our trash. I don't really see the point of the numbering system or why it matters if it's in their bag or not, but we will do as we are told. Before setting out we had lunch, left over lentils and rice from two days ago. There were a lot of day visitors coming through the visitor center area and they all stared at us like we were aliens! I guess people are all curious because we are actually going to hike instead of just stand at a view point. One enthusiastic guy told us he liked our outfits, that they were very fitting for the environment! 

It was clear out and pretty warm, but not too hot. We were able to wear long pants and our shade shirts and hats without roasting. The walk to the camp was up a river valley and was not terribly steep, but the elevation made it really difficult! The river we walked along is the glacially fed Rio Horcones and is the only water source along the way. Without a really good filter, it is not drinkable, so we had to carry lots of water from the visitor center. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get to camp, and we would not have wanted to walk any further! The hike started at 9,000 feet and went to about 10,500 at the camp. We should have come up the highway the day before and stayed in a hotel to get a jumpstart on acclimating, but oh well!

View of the moutains and Laguna Horcones near the visitor center 

Looking down the river valley toward the highway. The river is glacially fed and full of lots of silt.

The pictures unfortunately don't show how amazingly colorful the mountains are!

Cool shadows on the mountains where we stopped for a snack

The hike was really pretty with Aconcagua in view at the head of the valley and colorful mountains surrounding it. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but they were so colorful! Red, yellow, green, purple, orange, brown, tan, grey, white and even blueish teal in some areas!

The camp is located at the base of two valleys where rivers from two different glaciers meet and is aptly named Confluencia.  Upon arrival to the camp, we had to check in and turn in another section of our permit. There are only a few other people camped out. The area looks like it would accomodate hundreds of people in climbing season. There are several frames for large dome tents, these must be what the guided tours sleep in during the climbing season. We are glad they are not here! There are also a number of porta potty structures, only one of which is in use. To our surprise, it contains a real toilet that flushes! There is of course no toilet seat though, that would be too much to ask! Seems strange that they don't just do a composting toilet. I wonder where all the water from flushing goes? I also wonder what they do with all of the park entrance fees they recieve, cause it sure isn't going to basic things like toilet seats!

The campsite is exposed, as is everywhere around here. There are no trees, just ground vegetation, like clumps of grass and low growing bushes, none of which are more than a foot tall. Once our house was built, we made dinner. Polenta, white beans, red onion and mushrooms with some really good seasoning I found in the free bin at the hostel. I found smoked red pepper flakes and pizza seasoning, which we have seen a lot and I guess people sprinkle it on pizza. I don't really know what it's made of, looks like italian seasoning, but has some red flakes mixed in too. It made for some of the best polenta we've ever had!

Thursday, March 19th 2015 <Aconcagua Day 2>

I thought we wouldn't sleep well in the elevation, but we did ok with the help of benadryl and advil PM! We also stayed nice and warm, the temperature was 38 when we got up, which is perfect for our sleeping bags. For breakfast we had brown rice cakes with peanut butter, banana and avocado, and some with peanut butter and jelly and some with just jam. It was a fine breakfast. I am always glad that I bring produce camping, even if it weighs a lot.

At 9:30 we set out. It was still cold, as the sun hadn't made in into all of the valley, so we hurried along trying to make it into the sun! There are trails up both of the valleys but we will only be visiting one. The end point of the hike is one of the base camps for climbers and is located at the top of the valley at around 13,500 feet. The end point is called Plaza Francia and is probably be the highest we have ever hiked!

Since we have to carry all of our water again, we decided that the lumbar packs from our large backpacks wouldn't be big enough. So I emptied everything from my backpack and we put our food, water (4 liters) and other day items in it, then cinched it down small. Jeff agreed to carry the bag up, to save me from dying. I have a really hard time in high elevation! The first hour of the hike was mostly uphill and at though it wasn't steep, the elevation made it really difficult!  After about an hour and a half we realized we were hiking along side of a very well camoflaged glacier! We had no idea where it started, because it just looked like a dirt pile! 

The trail got a little less steep after that. We continued up the valley hiking alongside and sometimes on the glacier to a view point where we stopped for lunch. We had soaked oats with chia seeds, shredded coconut, banana, apple and raisins.

The views were incredible. Durning the whole hike we were truly in awe and kept pointing out things to eachout, wow did you see that rock/stripe/color, etc! It may well be the coolest hike we have ever been on, but it's hard to say, because we tend to think that quite often when we go hiking! We decided the scenery is like Death Valley and Capital Reef combined with a high mountain throw in!

Here is a quote we really like and believe 100%, no matter where we go in the outdoors, we are always glad to be there.
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir

About another hour of fairly easy walking over multiple alluvial fans (dirt and rock that piles up at the base of mountains, from being washed down by water) brought us to the end of the trail at Plaza Francia. From there you look up at the mountain with a vertical rise of about 10,000 feet, so it doesn't compare to Denali, but still quite a site!

It's hard to tell, but underneath all of the dirt is a glacier. The dirt insulates it really well, so it doesn't melt much.

Very dry environment 

Huge erratic boulders everywhere!

Aconcagua and the black glacier, Lower Horcones Glacier, covered with every color of the mountains.

Jeff at the mirador (viewpoint), view down the valley

In the middle of the mountain, you can sort of see a cloud, that is an avalanche we got to see!

Panorama looking down the valley. The white crust was some kind of mineral build up that we would see wherever there had been running water.

To the left you can see a rock slide we got to watch!

You can see the path of this very large rock as it some how slid down hill toward the glacier.

The end of the trail, Plaza Francia.

We only saw vegetation for about the first hour of the hike, but this ultra hardy succulent was at the top, in Plaza Francia! It was tiny, each rosette about the size of a quarter. I hope it continues to thrive and not get stepped on!

Panorama 1: Looking down the valley and onto Horcones Glacier from Plaza Francia, North side

Panorama 2: Aconcagua from Plaza Francia

Panorama 3: Looking down the valley from Plaza Francia, South side

We made it!

We stayed up at the top for about an hour. The moutain truly goes straight up. We read somewhere that it is one of the highest natural walls in the world. This base camp is where climbers camp out the last night before the acutal climbing begins. It can be very dangerous due to frequent avalanches, as we witnessed! The trekking/hiking up the mountain that I mentioned earlier is done via another river valley on the other side of the mountain.

On the way back down I carried the backpack, which was by then very light! The hike back down was much easier! And it was the best part of the day, because we got to stare into the multi colored mountains the whole way! Luckily the trail was pretty well worn and free of large rocks or we would have fallen many times! Seeing Aconcagua up close was neat, but I think it is more impressive from far away, and all of the surrounding mountains were more interesting to us, as they are unlike anything we have ever seen!

An alluvial fan

It was also neat as we walked back to try to figure out where the glacier started. We completely missed it, but it was visable just a few minutes outside of camp! It was so well camoflagued that it looked like nothing more that a pile of dirt! It was also neat to see that over the course of the day some water had melted off the glacier, and it was enough to turn a stream that was clearn in the morning to murky orangeish brown by late afternoon.

Jeff next to a big erratic boulder on the nice smooth trail

Another nice panorama

and another, I couldn't stop...

More from the walk back. The left side all lit up, makes it like a different hike. It had been in shadow on the way up.

More panoramas! Too many beautiful striped mountains!!

I couldn't stop taking pictures, it was just too pretty!

Lower Horcones Glacier

Beautiful pools of water on top of the glacier

Mountains we didn't really notice on the way up when they were in shadow

The only flowers we saw!

Nice view of the native vegetation, grasses and spiky bushes

Rock fall area

Another very pretty succulent

This water was clear enough to drink when we walked past it in the morning! By afternoon it was filled with the silt from the melting glacier.

View of the glacier, a few minutes from the campsite, that we completely missed seeing in the morning.

View of the mountains above the campsite

View of the dome stuctures in the camping area and a pretty bird that tried to come into our tent

Water was diverted to the campsite via this pipe, which was at least 1/2 mile long!

We made it back to camp around 7 and hurried to make dinner and get into our tent as it was getting cold again! We had more polenta for dinner with red onion, red bell pepper, tomatoes and garbanzo beans. It was another fantastic meal! (: Before going to sleep we got out of the tent to take a final pee and were rewarded with one of the brightest views of the stars we have ever seen!

Friday, March 20th 2015 <Aconcagua Day 3> 

View of Confluencia camp, a mess of ugly buildings and porta potties, but real nice mountains!

We slept in today and took it easy hiking back out to the highway. It was like a whole new hike with the sun much higher in the sky. It was so much quicker getting out going down hill with out light back packs, that we had plenty of time to go around the entrance area interpretive trail and stop for lunch too. More of the same lunch as yesterday.

After lunch we went back to the visitor center to check out and turn in the last piece of our permit and hand in our numbered trash bag. From there we walked 3 km down the highway to the nearest settlement, Puente Del Inca, where there is a natural mineral bridge. It was created over millions of years by deposits of the highly mineralized water of a natural hot spring. We waited at Puente Del Inca for over an hour for the bus, which was late. We were happy to have gotten the front seats in the double decker again! At 5pm we were pulling away. The trip back was slow. It seemed like we stopped every 2 minutes to pick up or drop off someone at every little town or house along the way!

Morning sun near the campsite

Looking up the valley to Aconcagua and the Confluencia campsite

View of the mountains near the highway and visitor center

Such lovely yellow!

Sometimes the translated informational signs make silly errors. According to the sign here, these are wandering blocks (instead of glacial erratics). (:

me

This is their way of saying single file. Apparently Indians tend to walk single file?

This is supposed to be Mirror Lake, but it is currently dried up

More colorful mountains near the highway

Laguna Horcones

Jeff

It's hard to see but on the little hill there are several green birds, Austral Parakeets! We have been wanting to see some, some it was very exciting to see them on the side of the highway. They are the most beautiful lime green.

Jeff standing with a snow measuring stake along the highway. View East toward Puente Del Inca.

Puente del Inca. The buildings are part of an old resort built by an English company.

Puente del Inca. The resort is now closed and people can no longer walk on the bridge. The diversion of water into the resort was contribuiting to the breakdown of the bridge.

Nice view out the window on the way back.

We got back to Mendoza after 8:30, which gave us just under 2 hours to get dinner and go back to our hostel for our stored bag and make it back to the terminal again.  On the walk back to the hostel, we were disappointed to find that the vegetarian buffet we thought we would eat a quick dinner at was closed! So we continued on to the hostel, and found that there were 6 criossants left from breakfast, and we happily ate them all! Jeff then found 3 tomatoes and half an onion in the free bin, which we packed away. We got our bags out of storage and repacked them and we had a box of food stored on a high shelf in the kitchen that needed repacking too.  The box was labeled with our name on it and the date, but someone had gone thought it while we were gone and taken our salt and lemon and who knows what else! (I spent the rest of the evening racking my brain trying to figure out if anything else was missing!) Once we were thoroughly sweaty from the walk and rushed repacking, we and walked back to the bus station with about a half hour to spare. Once on the bus I made us onion and tomatoe salad that turned out pretty good with red wine vinegar and spices.

Our dinner!