March 5 - Around Mendoza

We decided to take it easy and book our wine tour tomorrow.  Besides a guide book said to watch out for rental bikes and to have an emergency number to call if your bike breaks down.  Since we don't have a cell phone and there is no way we could make ourselves understood on the phone anyway, its better to do a bike tour instead of striking out on our own.


Today's photos started out the moment I went out of our room.  I looked down the hall and, what the heck!!!!
This fellow is painting the stairwell - he needed a higher ladder so he wired two ladders together.  Does anybody know how to say 'Worksafe' in Spanish?

(Later on in the day the ladders were taken apart and he was working down the hall, so he survived.)

While on the topic of our hostel - here's our room.  Interesting wallpaper on two of the walls (the other two are mauve).  Some of the papers are dated 2013, so this isn't that old a job.

Old building, high ceilings, creaky floors.  The bathroom has a floor drain in the middle of a tiled floor and the shower in the corner.  The floor slope is wrong so it has leaks onto the wood floor in the bedroom and has rotted a section of the floor.  They fixed this by nailing a rubber mat over the floor.  We use a towel to keep the water in the bathroom.  BTW, there is one of those fancy foot showers in this bathroom, but it is a very old fixture.

Factoid -  the taps are labelled 'C' & 'F' for Caliente and Frio.

A view of the outside.  Note the pointy tops to the fence pickets and the razor wire on top.  This is not unusual.  The gate (on the left) is always locked.  

Street view.  Houses are generally built right to the sidewalk as shown on the right, or small front yards are fenced with vicious spike topped metal fences.  Our hostel isn't the only one with razor wire.

This street seems average.  There are a lot of very nice houses around town.  The one thing they all have in common is security.  Windows onto the street all have bars.  Gates are all locked with keys on both sides.  A lot of houses have a small garage door fronting the street.

Note the 'rain gutters' as I called them, on the left.  I read that they were built this way on purpose to irrigate the trees that line most, if not all streets.  We were able to walk around town all day in shade.  It would be interesting to find out how much cooler the city is due to all these trees.

Here is a very nice house in an older style.  To make me a liar, the front yard doesn't have a fence.  

There is a lot of modern architecture in Mendoza.  We were able to see right through a couple of house to their back yard.  No yard on the front so they can have more at the back.

No parking, no problem!  Just pull right up onto the wide sidewalk.  On the main streets the sidewalks are very wide, especially on streets with many restaurants, so they park where there aren't restaurant tables.  The car behind is blocked by the white one in front and the one beside parked on the street.

I saw a motorcycle riding on the sidewalk so he wouldn't have to go against the traffic on a one way street.


We had breakfast at a sidewalk cafe.  We had 'Media Lunas,' juice and coffee.  Snap quiz - what is a Media Luna?  It is a common breakfast item for us as well as down here.

Afterwards, we went downtown to shop.  The highlight of the morning for Laura was to run into a money changer.  They are fairly common and holler "Cambio" to identify themselves.  She flashed a US $100 bill at him and got a rate of 10.5 pesos per dollar.  The rate at an official exchange down the street is 7.95 pesos per dollar.  Talk about a black market!

The fountain in the main square - this time it was on.













After lunch we wandered over to the large park about 1 kilometer west of us.  These are the main gates.  Note the condor on top. A condor is not my first choice for a gate ornament.

 This wouldn't be my first choice for anything.  I wonder what the Spanish translation for 'fighting wild pigs' is.












In spite of these terrible examples I've shown you, the park is actually a very pretty place.  Here is their 1 km long rowing lagoon.  In addition to lots of park space and trees, there are also some scientific buildings, a weather observatory and a golf course.








Sorry Pat & Ben, we just had to show it.










Last park photo.  They have those irrigation ditches in the park, too.  Here are some valves installed to control the flow.  This type of irrigation in the city makes some sense, except for the fact that these are open ditches (a kid could fall in) and they tend to collect garbage.











 
Laura took a rest for the last half of the afternoon, so I set off on my own.  The first stop was a museum (of course).  Called the 'Area Fundacional,' it mainly depicts early Merndoza and the devastating earthquake of 1861 that destroyed the city (estimated at 7.8 plus, centred right in town).  This photo is of an  archaeological excavation of a ruined building that was right under the museum.  No other photos.  



Across from the museum are the preserved ruins of the Jesuit Mission, also destroyed in the quake.

I assume the steel framework is to keep the rest of the brickwork from falling over.











Last stop today was the old railway station.  No trains come here anymore, so the place is falling apart.  The tracks leading south from here are used by an electric trolley system.

Here's the trolley.  Note the female engineer.

Here she is throwing the switches to bring the trolley from the northbound track to the southbound track for the next run.  She has to climb in and out of the cab twice to complete the job.

I rode the trolley partway back to the hostel.  It has to stop for traffic lights - no priority for it.

I used the local bus system to get to the museum and to the train station.  This was a bit of adventure in itself, mostly due to my deplorable Spanish.  I wrote a post about it - it follows this one.

We're off on our wine tour tomorrow.  We stopped in at the hostel desk tonight to talk to the girl there.  We offered to share some of the wine we bring back with her.  She told us which were the best wineries, so we can make sure we get the best stuff.