Mendoza, Part 1: Hair-pinning through the Andes

Finally, FINALLY I have something blogworthy to add to the blogosphere, thus avoiding blogageddon, or at least avoiding unpesoparati's blogmise. Ugh, don't know if you have noticed, but blog-blended words are the new fusion trend. Ugh.

ANYWAY, so yeah. It's time to dust off this here creeky ol' blog, and get back to business. I had four weeks of an extremely difficult Spanish class, and by golly, that's finally behind me (though I do hope the I gleaned a bit of knowledge from it).

We went to Mendoza, Argentina, this past weekend. Mendoza is where 70% of Argentina's wine is produced. To get there, we hopped El Rapido, a double decker bus for an eight-hour ride through the Andes.

The bus ride through these amazing steeps and slopes was incredible--definitely one of the best parts of the trip. There were a lot of curvy rivers running down the mountains. And the long and windy road followed alongside them for countless miles:



















On the Chilean side, there were loads of little footbridges from the highway, across the river, and to the houses on the other side:



















The following is another one of those pictures to scare my mom. Click on this baby to enlarge. On the way to the Chile/Argentina border, there was first a very steep mountain to climb. CHECK OUT THESE SWITCHBACKS! Yes, they were scary when the driver took them a little hot. But alas, we're still here.













Above these switchbacks actually ran a ski lift (an unbelievably steep ski lift--over the highway!) for those extreme skiier types (not skiing season just yet).














Both times that we reached the border, we had to go through customs and immigration. That meant getting out of the bus, having our passports stamped, and sending our luggage through security. A pain, of course, but the price to pay for views like this:














There were a lot more craggy rock formations on the Argentina side. It's a desert climate, even in Mendoza:

























And lastly, just to scare my mom again, is a picture I snapped going down those crazy switchbacks seen above.

Expect more about Mendoza tomorrow. Back-to-back posts; aren't you lucky?!