The End of the Adventure, Santiago Chile

Amie’s Parting Words
Our adventuring has come to an end. Yes, that is right; we are departing South America, land of adventure, and continuing our travels to other regions of the world.

Back when this trip was just an idea, a thought that Mike and I entertained with excitement, I can say now that I had not a single clue what was ahead of us. A lot had to be accomplished to make this happen, and I truly believe we are very lucky to have all the cards laid just right so that our dream did become a reality. The trip was a very vague concept requiring much mental and physical work even before we set out on the road. Not quite knowing what was ahead, but strongly continuing with curiosity and freedom as our only fuel we persevered. I would almost say that the mental aspect of changing our lives to focus around only one thing, the trip, was the hardest thing for me. I had slowly grown into a life which was very comfortable and enjoyable. I loved my life, but I had to change everything about it and give up so much for this trip with no real expectations or knowledge of what I was going towards.

Once on the road, a whole new set of challenges hit me. I remember on the second day of riding realizing that I didn’t have a phone or a vehicle which I could control and I was completely dependant on Mike. I have gone through several painful withdrawals in which I desperately miss my family and friends. I have been in extremely uncomfortable situations where I have realized I don’t have any other option than sucking it up and pressing on. I have been hungry. I have been so hot that I felt I couldn’t even hold myself up, so cold that I felt I may loose my fingers. I have had the worst stomach pains, diarrhea and food poisoning. I have gotten filthy. I have broken down and wondered why I would ever put myself in the situation I was in. The list goes on and on, but throughout all the aches and pains I have had the most wonderful time of my life. I have seen so many different cultures, met so many different people, gazed upon some of the most unique and beautiful sites, become closer friends with Mike, have done some amazing things and lastly I have completed a huge accomplishment in my life. It feels great and I can say now that I am a changed person. For those of you who have dreams of adventuring, I greatly encourage you to make it happen. Anything is possible with ambition and effort.

I would still consider the rest of our journey an ‘adventure’ if Yoshita was to be a part of it, but over much discussion and time, we have made the decision to ship her home and continue our travels with backpacks. The reason for this conclusion are as follows: the cost of shipping her to Australia and Turkey, the great hassles of importing and exporting her in the various countries ahead of us, my desire to be able to help with the driving, my desire for a break from the saddle… the list goes on. I know Mike is a bit disappointed, but also strongly understands and agrees with the reasons, namely the first two. We are going to continue to the countries we originally set out to see, but utilize airplanes and rental cars to get around. I know we will still run across many adventures and great stories, but I do not think it will be as often and therefore our daily blog will not be continued.

We will post occasional stories and pictures to “Part II” at mikeandamie.blogspot.com for those that are interested.

Mike's Parting Words
I’ll never look at a globe the same.

This trip hasn’t been easy, but it hasn’t been impossible. If you are dreaming of doing something like this I would advise you to stop dreaming and start planning. 5 months traversing the Americas by motorcycle will cost you between 10-20K, a lot less than you would expect I bet. That is all inclusive, bike, flight home, shipping of the moto, everything. If you really want it, just do it (sorry Nike). Really, plan it, work towads it and do it. This trip has made me think its just that easy (because it is).

It was the best of times it was the worst of times. It was trying, not always fun (often we asked ourselves why are we doing this? Are we crazy?) almost never comfortable… but the worst memories soon become the best. I’ve come away with a new perspective, focus, appreciation, and confidence—not to mention an incredible bonding experience with my wife.

We said to eachother before we left “This will make or break our relationship.” Honestly, I felt like our relationship was already “made” but a bit nervous that 5 months together, 24 hours a day, through tough times might strain the relationship to a point where we might not be able to recover. But I decided we needed to do this, especially now. If we can survive this together, we are ready to start a family together. Maybe a bit more rigorous than other couples trials…

One of the biggest eye openers for me has been in regards to the perspective of time. Four and a half months at home, in the routine, goes by in the blink of an eye. There are birthday parties, a BBQ or two, maybe something a bit more exciting, but really, not all that much happens and everyone just grinds through the days, weeks, and months. For a bit of sacrifice, Amie and I were able to live, really live, for 4.5 months, and it felt like we’ve lived years—experiencing things you couldn’t experience in a thousand weekends.

Thanks
We want all of our fans and readers of the blog to know that you have all made our trip so much more enjoyable and have been the ones that inspired and encouraged us to keep up the journal so diligently. We have felt our friends, family and interested persons are almost right there with us, sharing our adventures as well as misadventures. It has kept us from profound homesickness and encouraged us to keep going during trying times. Thank you all!

We also would like to thank Brian for generously giving us the only ipod which has brought us music on our entire journey (after Amie managed to destroy it in Mexico); We don’t know what we’d do without such a generous gift! Also, thank you for the compression sack as we use it everyday! Thanks to Keith for bringing out all kinds of goodies to us in Ecuador (Yosh thanks you too)! Thank you mom (Pele) for providing us so many delicious snacks that have saved us many times and taking care of our red tape while away! Thank you Aunt Debbie for taking care of our baby, Candy, so well while we are away, we don´t know how we would do all of this without you! Thanks you Grandma M for hosting a wonderful Bon Voyage party for us. Thank you to Tornincasas for the great sendoff and mini vacation in Ensenada; great times. Thank you Gina and Tariq for taking such good care of our house while we are away. Thank you Adam Pate for being a great travel friend and contributing to the many great memories on the trip. Lastly we would like to thank Adam and Valerie for the inspiration of this whole trip.

Gear Review
Coming soon...

Lessons Learned-Tips
Coming soon...

Part II: mikeandamie.blogspot.com

Santiago, Chile

Well, what can I say. All the worrying was for nothing. Well, not really, Acecargo just got there act together today at about 9am. We arrived at 10am, and Paola (Ronalds assitant) gave us the directions to a crating company that would drain the fluids and provide the certificate, as well as crate the bike, and drive the box down to Valparaiso. This was sounding much better than leaving it in the grocery store parking garage.

We got down to United Shippers, and were very impressed with the level of professionalism and eagerness to help. This is where we needed to come first! Pablo Moreno was awesome. He showed us photos of other crates built for motorcycles and gave us a ride back to the metro. His storage area was very secure, and all and all we feel 100% better about the situation. Yoshita should be back in the USA in 22 days. If she arrives safetly and all goes well, I will share all the details of the shipping with the adventure rider community.

We rode the subway back to our hotel feeling very strange: excited and relieved to have found a solution we are happy with and at the same time said to be short a friend. Yoshita has taken on more than a human name, she has served us so well she is like a pal, a travelling partner throught the best and the worst of things. Safe travels old girl!

We'll miss you, champion of motorcycles!

Santiago, Chile

What a stressful day today has been trying to get the bike shipped home. We got here with plenty of time, but have been on a wild goose chase for days, and now we are down to the wire far from confident the bike will be safe and we will be on our flight tomorrow.

It wasnt always like this. On the internet, I found acecargo.cl, which from email correspondence I felt very confident was up to the job, if a bit more expensive than I expected. I went back and forth for weeks with Ronald Chaytor with schedules, pricing, measurements, etc. When we finally arrived in Santiago everything seemed to be on the level. We felt fine leaving for Vina for the weekend, with no concerns or worries. When we got back today, all that had changed. Ronald was gone, on vacation at his beach house. His assitant was less than helpful. Everything she said gave amie and I more to worry about. Where they planned on keeping the bike was not safe OR secure, the pricing had already gone up, things like the draining of the gasoline, oil, brake fluid, etc was not addressed... All this and we leave tomorrow. We are supposed to give these folks $1000 and our bike with the keys and leave the country!? I have no confidence we will see the bike again! I would rather just gift it to someone on the street then pay $1000 extra on top of never seeing our bike again!

The reality is, if this doesnt work out tomorrow, we will just have to change our flight and use plan B shipper in Valparaiso, who requires two days minimum. Amie and I had a tough decision to make if we move forward with AceCargo or scrap everything we have done and start over in Valpo. The situation was sticky because the chain could go at any time (its past all adjustment and very noisy) and Valpo is about 70 miles away, plus we pre-paid for our hotel tonight, and we would be SOL on a ride back to the airport, etc. We decided to give AceCargo the shot. I went to bed with a few more grey hairs. Nothing we can do but wait and see...

Amie models her new purse

Amie wonders... Will she ship??

A giant beer and the decor at Schopdog got my mind off our woes

Santiago

Today the plan was to head off to the “nice” part of Santiago. We didn’t sleep that great, even on our blow up mattress. It’s a bit like a water bed when its not full of air, and I toss and turn which drives Amie nuts. So I guess, neither of us slept that well. I think we were woken up to a superstar couple upstairs going at it on a very squeaky bed. Superstar because we tried to ignore them for about an hour and a half.

We took the subway down to Provencia and Los Leones. It was a bit nicer indeed. Amie found her purse, and we enjoyed lunch at an outdoor café. We’ve learned the hard way to add up the bill in our heads before we actually get it so we know right away if it is correct. There have been numerous incidences where we have been over charged, or given the wrong change. In fact, it already happened here in Santiago last night. The change came back, $2 less than was expected. I made a point of it, and then saved money on the tip (I don’t leave one in those situations).

We tried again without success to contact our shipping agent, Ronald Chaytor of AceCargo. Its optimistic to think I’d get him on his cellphone on a Sunday, but it was worth a shot. I’m more than a little anxious for tomorrow when we drop Yoshita off. I really hope it goes smoothly. I’ve always read, “make sure the bike goes before you do” and I don’t think we will be able to accommodate that. We leave on Tuesday, and we are dropping the bike off for crating on Monday. I’m crossing fingers and toes things go smooth.

Middle of the night emergency bed inflation

Lots of subways in Santiago

We are HERE

Santiago contrast

Vina del Mar to Santiago, 80 miles

It was an easy ride back to Santiago in the sun. I’m glad we decided to stay another day in Vina, even if it was at “Chifa” (what we’ve named our hotel there). We pulled back into Santiago and began looking for the Acecargo office we were at two days before. Our plan was to find it, then find a place for ourselves in the same general vicinity, or at least near the same metro line so we could get back and forth easily.

We did the hotel shuffle for a bit, and ended up in the Paris Londres neighborhood. Its very nice here and the majority of the hotels are budget. I guess this used to be Franciscan Friar territories, with awesome homes built in the 1920s. It really is very pleasant. Unfortunately, our hotel isn’t. We had to settle on the only one of 4 that would allow us to park our moto inside. And boy was it a pain shoe-horning it in the front door, and then around two tight corners into its own room deep in the house. The idiot hotel employee brought me a piece of sheetrock two use as a ramp for the 3 steps out front. I mean really…. Sheetrock? Are you kidding? He wasn’t…

We struck out to do some shopping in order to prepare us for the next leg of the trip. We visited the central station shopping area and the Mall de Centro near Plaza de Armas. The central station shopping area felt like we were in Latin America again. Lots of graffiti, beggars and buscars, Pirate CD vendors, imitation gear, pickpockets (one tried me), etc.

The pickpocket attempted went something like this. Amie and I were walking through the crowd with our arms around each other. Two guys approached from behind and one bumped into me pretty good. I had my wallet deep in my front pocket turned so the wide side was perpendicular to my leg, basically as deep and as difficult to get out as possible. He then proceeded, dramatically to distract me by yelling and gesturing that I bumped into him and hurt him, or knocked his drink on him or something. While I was assessing the situation, his partner was hovering me from behind very closely trying to make the grab. Amie and I didn’t miss a beat, I kept my arm around her, ignored both of them, put my other hand in my pocket and pressed on. The two start shouting at us, but we just ignored them.

From what we saw today, our mind hasn’t changed on Chile. Not that great a country. Very American feeling, very expensive, not that clean, not that friendly. The only place we really like here was Torres del Paine, and that’s a natural park—hard for humans to screw that up.

Leaving Vina del Mar - Clear skies

A view of Valpariso

Driving through Santiago...the hotel shuffle

I sure wouldn't want that job

Yosh awaiting her parking spot

What a pain it was to get her in here!

Thumbs down to pushy people and pickpocketers!

Vina del Mar

We woke up to the woman, with her bright red lipstick, knocking on the door only to mention that it was raining out and that we might want to stay another night at the “Chifa” (Chinese restaurant in Spanish) house. Well, sure enough it was raining, actually pouring—a bit of surprise from the sunny day prior.

We decided we better just stay put as we had the time and wandering through the rain to find another little beach town and doing the hotel shuffle didn’t sound like fun. Yes, we were looking forward to checking out from our hotel room which brings us wafts of foul Chinese food every so often, but at least the bed was comfy (as long as you didn’t take too big of a whiff of the sheets).

A rainy day in a beach town doesn’t make us too motivated to get out of bed so we slept in, talked, rested and did not much of anything until we had a little break in the rain in the early afternoon. We walked to the same restaurant that we enjoyed a delicious sandwich at the day before. I had to know what exactly they put in their chicken club sandwich so I could replicate it at home! Thinly sliced chicken breast, thick bacon, herb cream cheese inside a pita bread with a side of guacamole…fantastic.

The remainder of the day stayed dry for us, but the weather was still ugly and chilly. We wandered the streets some more—much needed on our legs as it seems few and far in-between when we actually get physical exercise on this trip.

Not much to our day, but before we knew it we were watching the Grammy’s until the wee hours of the night.

Hello Sirs

Vina del Mar

We must have gotten used to staying up late because we didn’t fall asleep last night until nearly 2am. For the first time in what feels like weeks we got our 8 hours of sleep though, which was fantastic. Breakfast in bed arrived at 10am and was a pleasant surprise for Amie. ;-)

We lounged around catching up on this blog and photo downloading until about 2pm and then headed off to “McCafe” for free wireless and frappaccinos (is McDonalds starting its attack on Starbucks in South America??). We had lunch at a ritzy waterfront bistro. The food was fantastic and we couldn’t help but notice how American/European things feel. It definitely doesn’t feel like the rest of South America in central Chile.

Vina del Mar is the seaside resort for Santiago’s citizens. Its got a carny area, a pedestrian mall/promenade, a posh beachfront Malecon, highrise condos and casinos. The pacific is cold, just like home, and the weather is usually overcast in the morning and not all that balmy in the summer, much like Santa Cruz, CA (in fact the ride here over the hill yesterday was a lot like highway 17 with tall pines along a windy mountain road).

On the way back to the hotel I stopped to say hello to an old lady and a giant rottweiler. As I approached the lady was fear stricken that her dog might chew me up she pulled his leash so tight and told me to get away. What was that dog capable of we wondered. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on US gossip thanks to the E channel and watched American Idol.

Exquisite Chilean food

Everyone enjoying summer

Where's Mike?

This lady didn't want Mike NEAR her dog/beast

Los Andes to Santiago then to Vina del Mar 140 miles

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Chile reminds us a lot of the states; I think we have a lot of influence here. Everything seems a bit more organized, clean and structured. Although, just when we started feeling that way, we encountered quite a few situations with our hotel that made us wonder if we were back in Central America.

The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed and hit the road this morning. I felt extremely exhausted from all the late nights and weird sleep patterns from the days prior. Knowing we needed to press on to organize the bike shipping and the fact that our hotel was $46 a night (and not even nice) motivated me enough to pack up and put my gear on.

Our first stop was the shipping company that had told us yesterday to return in the morning. Well, just as we suspected, once we got there they really had no more information than the night before other than an address of a man in Valparaiso. This is precisely why we gave ourselves so many days to handle the bike shipping; nothing ever seems to go as planned. Mike decided it best to continue to pursue a guy in Santiago that he has been emailing back and forth about shipping for the last month—our next destination, Santiago.

We heard that Santiago is the most polluted city in South America. You could definitely see the smog as we began to approach the city. Once downtown we felt we were definitely in the states. Giant skyscrapers, business people bustling around on the wide sidewalks, clean streets, a nice place! With just an address we were both a little nervous that finding our contact would cause us to tour the whole massive city, but luck was with us and after a handful of inquiries we found AceCargo and met Ronald Chaytor. Ronald was an older man who is from Chile, but spoke great English from his many visits to his warehouse in Miami. He was what I would call a fuddy-duddy—shuffling around, mumbling ideas off left and right. Surprisingly his assistant gathered all the required paperwork and knew exactly what needed to be done. What a relief. We are to return Yoshita to his office in Santiago on Monday. From there, he is hiring a company to come to the office and crate her and our belongings. After she is crated he is hiring another company to pick her up and take her to Valparaiso where she will be shipped on a boat. Quite a few steps which makes us a little nervous, but it seemed to be well thought out and legit. Sometimes I wonder how many times people just drop their belongings never to see them again…

With Yoshita’s departure planned, we now have 6 days to ourselves before flying out. We were told not to miss the beach town of Vina del Mar which is just about 2 hours away from Santiago. There is an impressive new freeway connecting the two cities as it seems many people from Santiago spend their weekend and holidays here. On our way, we ran into a couple on a Harley Davidson at the gas station. Mike has become super-socialite and after chatting with them we rode together towards Vina del Mar as our destination was the same. They had full Harley gear on, belt buckle, hats, shirts, jackets, etc. They even sported an American flag bandana which was tied around the handlebars. They definitely drove a bit fast for my taste, but I let Mike have his fun following them and refrained from my usual leg squeezes to get him to slow down. Chile is more like the US than any country we have been on this trip: lunch at Mcdonalds, riding with a Harley, and on a good freeway no less!

Vina del Mar is HUGE—its as much a big city as a beach town. As we arrived we could see the view confirming both. The sun was shining, it was warm, but not too hot; a beautiful day. Our Harley friends were kind enough to escort us to a decent priced hotel and to inquire about a price as they said tourists always get a higher rate. They landed us in a Chinese owned hotel, first one we’ve stayed at. It is 35 dollar per night, which from what we have heard is a good price for this town during this season. Clean enough in the rooms, although when you walk into the lobby it smells of funky fried rice. The smell in the lobby I could handle as long as I kept the door to our room closed. We crashed on the bed for a while and caught up on some R&R. Since it is Valentine’s day, we wanted to make sure to have a nice dinner out, so just when I started to get ready, I noticed there was no hot water. A pain, but usually something easily fixed when inquired. I went out to the lobby and explained the situation. She said a few things in Spanish I didn’t understand then shuffled out to the backyard where I heard her turning some knobs, more walking back and forth, and at that point I thought Mike better take over. The solution the woman offered was for us to walk upstairs and have a shower. Heck no, if we were to have a separate bath, then we shouldn’t be paying private bath prices which are usually twice as much. The lady then proceeded to tell Mike that she can’t fix it until the ‘boss’ is back, but she didn’t know when the ‘boss’ would be back. She expected this to be sufficient, but not to us. We were upset and had already pre-paid for two nights. Mike returned stating that if he is going to have to use another bathroom, he wanted to pay less. If they didn’t know when the boss was to return, that is not acceptable and he would either have them move us to another room with working water or we would find another hotel. As soon as he said that, the lady looked shocked and then said ‘hold on let me talk to the boss’. Oh! So, now the boss is available to talk with. What BS, we thought we had left this type of service behind in Central America. Mike stood outside the room to add to the urgency and importance as the lobby clerk and ‘boss’, huffed and shuffled back and forth. Much time passed and we couldn’t believe the customer service we were receiving. They finally returned and ushered us to another room upstairs. They obviously didn’t want to put us in here as it hosts 3 separate beds. Yes, there was hot water at least although you receive it in spurts in between freezing cold….oh boy.

We took a bus into the central plaza area of the city which was supposed to have all the restaurants. We were hoping to find a nice little romantic place and enjoy some delicious seafood. We didn’t want to ask any particular recommendations as we usually only receives someone’s uncles restaurant. We figured it was our best bet to walk around the region of the plaza where the restaurants were. The plaza was beautiful, all lined with lights and bustling with people. Much to our surprise all of the restaurants were all fast food types, so we continued to walk down the busy street, after about 5 or 6 blocks ending with pubs and discotechs, no nice restaurants. After much walking and feeling quite chilled from the crisp ocean air, we settled for a little pub type place by the plaza which served Mexican food. I had my reservations on how good the Mexican food would be, but much to my surprise it was quite tasty.

We took a Taxi back to our hotel as it is a bit out of the way from everything but we forgot to buy water and being very thirsty did so at the hotel for the steep price of $1.50 per tiny bottle. Man, I miss Argentina already! Prices are SO high here it makes us both cringe. Well, we paid our 3 dollars for the water, brought them up to the room and while I took my first sip asked myself why I smelt that terrible funky fried ride… Looking at the bottle I noticed it was caked with funkiness which reeked of dirty Chinese food floor. UGH! The odor was so strong, that when you drank from the bottle you actually thought you could taste it. I tried to rinse the bottle, but to no avail. I smelled my hand after holding the bottle and it was as if the smell had absorbed into my skin. The most fowl smell you could imagine. We put the bottles down in disgust not knowing how to get the water out of them without having to endure such smells. We then noticed the room beginning to smell of the Chinese funkiness. We must get rid of the bottles! We scrambled in hopes of finding a cup of sorts, but with no options we plugged our noses and downed the water. Afterwards, we came to the conclusion that the smell wasn’t just coming from the bottle, but from the water as well as we could taste it lining our mouths. We quickly rushed the bottles to the hall and completely showered and soaped ourselves, hoping to rid us of the odor. 2 nights in this hotel and it has already caused us so much grief!

Old salty Chileans

Wanna go for a sweet ride???

Pedal to the metal Grandpa!

Chilean vineyard

Our first view of Vina del Mar...

...and our new Harley friends

Matching outfits again

Night out on the town for V-day! Ouuuu!

Mendoza, Argentina to Los Andes, Chile, 176 Miles and one border crossing

It was hard to say goodbye to our new friends today. They all made us feel so comfortable as if we had known them for years. Leaving from such comforts to the open road again wasn’t easy, but needed to be done as we need all the time we can get to sort out the shipping of Yoshita. Unfortunately we have learned on this trip that even the simplest things usually require more effort than expected and thus much time to sort out.

No matter how many hours of sleep we get, Mike and I still wake up feeling completely exhausted. Today we did wake up a bit earlier than our usual mid day hour, but that is because we had to pack up and hit the road by noon. We had another great breakfast waiting for us which we enjoyed with Camila and soon after Francsico came home from work. He, Camila, Walter and Betty all wanted to join us on a farewell ride through the mountains towards Chile. It was great to have a farewell train of motos taking us out through town, almost felt just like the first day we left from our house, being surrounded by our friends and family.

As we headed out of town the scenery started to become full of beautiful mountain ranges, and the more miles we rode, the more beautiful it all became. Sunny skies, warm air, but not too hot, a perfect ride to remember as one of our last in South America.

As we weaved through the Andes, through tunnels and over bridges, we passed a few other motorists--four of them actually, 3 of which were V-stroms. Shortly after, we stopped for lunch at a parilla and met all of them. They were Brazilians. Mike somehow managed to pay for the lunch bill without Francisco noticing which was the first time we were able to pay for anything during the past 3 days.

We rode a few miles further and said our goodbyes. I have never met such generous people, and after being on the road for so long, they had truly made me feel at home in a sense and it was sad to say goodbye. I hope that they will come to visit us as I am not sure when we will be in Argentina next.

Soon after our departure, we started climbing higher and higher into the steep mountains. As we climbed the weather cooled down, until a point where we were actually cold again and could see snow not far up on the mountains peaks. We passed Camagoura on this ride, the second tallest mountain in the world. Right at the very top of our climb was the border crossing. By far the most organized and efficient border crossing we have come across on our entire trip. It was so well organized, you didn’t even have to get out of your car to exit Argentina or enter Chile. There were little booths set up that you drove up to, it was great; what a way to finish off our last border crossing in South America!

Mike found the shipping company in Los Andes who Francisco had mad a few calls to and setup all the information for us to ship. Well, just as we have come to expect, nothing seems as easy as it sounds. Sure enough the shipping company knew nothing of the information Francisco had given Mike and requested us to come back at 10:30 the next morning after they make some phone calls. That puts us a few blocks down in a little hotel for the evening.

No more Bife de Chorizo, Alfajores (little cakes), delicious empanadas…we sure will miss Argentina.

Mike made friends with this local mechanic

Our departure entourage

Francisco and Camila on the Africa Twin

Walter and Betty on the Varadero

Lunch stop with the Brazilians on the vstroms

Our final farwell...so sad

We will miss you guys!

Scenery was outstanding!

Back in the Andes!

Brrr...

Mendoza

Amie and I were comatose. We cannot keep up. Even sleeping in until 11am did us no good. We were completely useless, however, that didn’t stop our hosts. They had a whole day planned for us. Camila was to take us on a city tour until Francisco came home from work for lunch, then we were going to pressure wash the motorcycle while the girls went shopping, and finish the afternoon at a vineyard wine tasting. Finally, dinner at Walters.

There are a lot of cities that are great to visit, but few that I could say I would like to live. Mendoza is one. Its about 600,000 people. Not too big, not too small. The climate is mild and dry. The downtown has incredibly wide avenues with old-growth trees offering abundant shade. There is a central park like NYC’s or Golden Gate park, complete with a lake, and all types of sporting clubs (rowing, golf, basketball, soccer, etc). Its got a bunch of universities and a solid 5 blocks dedicated to bars and restaurants. It is also the wine capitol of South America.

Camila was an excellent guide and we enjoyed seeing the city in style (from the air conditioned Chevy S-10). Marta, the maid, made us an amazing lunch (and did our laundry) and we rushed around doing all of the activities I described in the first paragraph. After a few glasses of wine at the vineyard I was really struggling to stay awake.

At 10:30 we arrived at Walter’s castle for dinner. His home is incredible. Brick porticos separate the living room and the foyer and kitchen. The backyard is even more fantastic if that is possible with 20’ high walls covered in vines, manicured lawn and garden, pool, fanciful lighting, and a table setting almost to pleasant to burden with a meal. Amie and I had mentioned in passing that we absolutely love Bife de Chorizo (sirloin steak) and Empenadas de Carne (meat pies). We were amazed to see mountains of perfectly made Empenadas on the table and thick juicy steaks on the grill. These people are the best!

Ice cream bomb!

Yoshita gets her second bath of the trip

Nothing like free wine and friends

(see above)

The grand tour

Betty treated us right with some homemade Empenadas

Perfect and delicous!

Sweet sweet Bife de Chorizo

Francisco's party trick (moments before he was covered in wine)

Lago Reynuso to Mendoza, 120 Miles with "Truck-Man"

Lots of “Lysol and Cola” (as Amie calls it) was our excuse for sleeping in until almost 11am. As we were concluding our late breakfast of bread, dulce de leche and mate, more friends of Francisco’s arrived to enjoy some lake time and a Sunday BBQ. Ernesto and his new girlfriend Susana (or Susie) are in there late 50s/early 60s and quite eccentric. Ernesto has a little poodle he cuddles named Pepina, and Susana was just down right whacky (more on that in a minute). Walter and his wife Beatriz are cut from the same gracious mold as our host, and with them came there two sons Maxi and Mati. Maxi is finishing his last year of Chef school and Mati is a monster of a kid; 21 years old, basketball star.

The wood for the asado (bbq, and yes they always bbq with wood) was lit at noon, and the feast that ensued soon after will not be soon forgotten. Ribs, sausage, steaks of all different varieties were served in succession over the course of 2 hours. Amie and I could hardly believe the quantity of meat consumed. We were shocked when we learned that this was not even a special occasion feast, just a typical Sunday asado!

After lunch all of the adults took a nap. It was incredible, all of these people just sawing logs at 3pm in the afternoon. The kids (or those under 30, including us) enjoyed more lakeside activities. Amie and I learned a bunch more Spanish and our new friends a bunch more English. We also spent some time clearing up the pronunciation differences between the words “Bitch, Beach and Peach.”

Marisol has to complete a physical test which includes multiple handstands and things for her major as a physical therapist. I thought I could help her out, you know, since I’d been practicing and all. What followed was an all out Gymnastic expo. A 5 year old girl ended up stealing the show with a tumble routine and splits made to look effortless.

We started to pack up for the three hour drive back to Mendoza at about 9pm. I thought this was a bit late as Francisco and the others had to work tomorrow (it was Sunday remember). While Amie and I were packing up our things, we noticed more meat coming out of the refridgerator and more wood being lit. No one was going anywhere without dinner first! Yes, that’s right, we had another heart-attack asado at midnight, everyone gorging themselves on sausage and steak (with almost no vegetables or side dishes) before heading out on the road for a 3 hour drive. We pulled into Francisco’s garage in Mendoza at 3:45am. He was at work at 8am the next day.

The patio on Sunday

Ernesto and his stuffed animal

Walter the grill-master

Salud!

Gymnastics Session

Francisco curing Amie's headache

Yoshita gets a break

The second round of food
Dinner at midnight, sunday night (our only foto of the very zaney Susie)