Patagonia: Day 1

December 16, 2008

Mendoza to San Rafael (235 km – 146 miles)

We got a late start in the morning since Carina had some last minute work issues come up and she had to work early into the morning. We left Mendoza and drove south to San Rafael, which is known as the wine capital of Argentina [Carina Edit: wine capital according San Rafael’eans]. When you buy a Malbec from “Mendoza”, you aren’t buying a wine that came from the city of Mendoza (which is what I use to thing), but wine from Mendoza is actually Mendoza Provence.

Once we arrived to San Rafael, we checked into the “San Martin” hotel, which was off of downtown. After taking our bags upstairs, we headed off on an excursion to “Valle Grande” and “Cañón del Atuel”. But first, I was introduced to driving in Argentina when Carina let me take control of the car. It’s amazing how quickly you adapt to the observed “guidelines” of the road…

The day’s excursion was basically a circuit that started from San Rafael, through a curvy, paved road though Valle Grande to a huge dam. From there, we drove through Cañón del Atuel, which was a curvy, treacherous road, but this time it was gravel and full of ruts from water erosion. Since Argentina is essentially a 3rd world country [Carina’s correction, 2nd world!!!!!!!!!!!!! – I’m getting offended], , you can do almost anything you want… including driving a tiny Peugeot through a national treasure like the Grand Canyon. Carina started to get scared because we went through a ½ a tank of gas driving through the canyon (1st and 2nd gears mostly). It was also getting dark, so she took control and drove at a faster rate than I was driving back to town.

After we arrived back at the hotel, we went to the spa in the hotel and messed around in their “water garden”… which was essentially a big hot swimming pool with high-pressure water jets. It was totally relaxing. Afterward, we went to the hotel restaurant for a late meal (10:00 p.m. is actually early here), then retired for the evening.