Inexplicably the bus journey seemed to fly by.
Either my boredom threshold is going up or I'm actually beginning to
enjoy the terrible films that have been a running theme throughout my
bus travels. The 36 hour marathon threw up such gems as “White
Chicks”, “Grown-Ups” (again) and the outstandingly awful “Old
Dogs”. I'd originally become aware of the latter film back when
Aled, Arth and I were on the west coast of the US and had seen a
trailer for it. At the time we were all struck by how horrific it
looked so it was nice that towards the end of a another journey I got
to experience just how devastatingly bad it was first hand.
Another highlight that I also remembered was
from a previous bus journey when I was relatively
impressed that “Downfall” (a great film about the last days of
the 3rd Reich) was being shown. However in true South
American style the film was inexplicably turned off 10 minutes before
the end so we never got to find out what actually happened to those
pesky senior Nazis. Maybe that's how the idea for “Iron Sky” came
about.
Arriving in Mendoza, I was again reminded that
an actual world existed outside of the bus. I like to think that I've
been learning a bit about who I am whilst travelling. Perhaps my
tolerance of epic bus journeys suggests I don't mind incarceration
and would probably get accustomed to prison life quite quickly. Good
to know.
The 15 minute walk from the bus terminal to my
hostel, located slap bang in the middle of Mendoza, convinced me that
I was going to like this place. The whole city had been left in
tatters after a huge earthquake in 1861 but had been rebuilt in a
carefully planned way whilst still retaining a lot of charm. After a
wander around I met up with Jack, a friend from University who was
also travelling South America but had started in Argentina. In true
touristy fashion, we decided to celebrate our meeting by going for a
steak and wine dinner – an Argentinian staple.
Jack had been given a recommendation for a
restaurant which turned out to be a fairly plush affair and would
certainly have been expensive if they hadn't mistakenly only charged
us for one steak. We weren't complaining since the steaks were
absolutely top draw. We ended the night by foolishly going to an
“artesan beer” bar which promised much but delivered watery pints
of bilge and ignited a pang of homesickness as we lamented the lack
of good beer in SA. We were foolish to expect anything else,
especially in the land where wine is king. With that in mind, we
decided to tick another touristy box by doing a tour of the wineries,
a good number of which are located close together in a suburb of
Mendoza... on bike. Neither Jack nor I can claim to be connoisseurs
or particular fans of red wine but when in Rome...
No comments:
Post a Comment