First class to Mendoza

I never really thought I would find myself opening a blog entry with description of a bus journey, but until this moment I had never had the unparalleled experience of travelling first class on the night bus in Argentina. It´s almost like flying first class. Slightly camp and enthusiastically attentive trolly hombre? Check. Fully reclining leather seats? Check. Unlimited drinks? Check. In-´flight´ Bingo? Check. OK, I am perhaps running out of parallels with Emirates 1st class, but you get the picture. This is bus travel as you´ve never seen before. We were given bibs to put on while we ate our food, we were given a tray of sandwiches, cakes and salads, and scoffed the lot before realising that this was just the starter and we would also receive hot food and a pudding. All in all, in the safe hands of Diego we arrived in Mendoza 14 hours later feeling remarkably fresh and well rested.

Argentina is no longer the land of plenty with 5 dollar steaks the size of a baby´s leg and cheap accommodation in cosy guest houses. Prices in 2005 were a fifth of today´s prices and prices have doubled in the last 12 months. This put paid to our original plans as double rooms in hostels were suddenly out of our price range so we went back to the drawing board and acquired José, a replacement for the much-loved Oh Vee which we left in London when we popped back in December. José is slightly more palatial than his predecessor. You can sit up in him, and roll over - sometimes it´s even possible to sleep.

So with José lashed to the side of Mike´s bag we set off around Mendoza province in a tiny hire car. First stop was the small spa town of Cacheuta which was quite frankly bizarre. A dusty dead-end town with not a scrap of shade where the 40 degree sun burned the red earth and a brown river snaked through a deep gorge. Gusts of wind whipped the dust into mini cyclones and wild dogs chased each other up the main, and only street. Argentine holiday makers were not to be deterred. They coughed up four quid each to squash in to barbed wire pens along the riverside with hundreds of other holiday makers, eat picnics and swelter. We didn´t linger.

We headed on to Potrerillos a small town in the foothills of the Andes which had had a recent surge of popularity when the river was dammed to create a huge and beautiful azure lake. We found an amazing campsite with a babbling stream and green grass sprinkled with daisies swaying under heavily-laden apple trees. A bay pony mowed the grass while puppies frolicked around its feet. We were immediately mobbed by the children of the owners who gave us the impression that gringos-under-canvas are in short supply. A pretty, rosie-cheeked imp called Abril followed me around for the 2 night of our stay chattering in spanish and the few words of english that she knew. Paradise in the Andes.

From there we drove higher and higher into mountains through expansive landscapes of multi-coloured rocks and trekked to the base camp of Acocagua, the largest mountain outside of the Andes. The base camp at over 3400 metres was a challenge in itself as the climb was steep and the sun unrelenting and we had nothing but respect for the climbers waiting at camp to acclimatise before attempting an ascent to the summit at almost seven thousand meters. From there we spent the night in Upsallata, once graced by the great Mr Pitt whilst filming for Seven Years in Tibet. I am not sure if he stayed in the same campsite as us which was carpeted with spilt rubbish and lorded over by a pack of overly-friendly stray dogs.

From there we zoomed to the a town called San Rafael, a few hundred kilometres of Mendoza and a successful wine growing region where we were yet again the only gringos in the local campsite. We pottered around the countryside, tried ´cool river´ in the local rapids (basically it´s you and a life jacket with an inflatable boogie board to hang on to bouncing down the rapids), we swam in some stunningly beautiful lakes and drove in the scorching heat through the stunning Canon del Atuel past amazing rock formations. We also managed to fit in some time to quaff some of the local wines.

After that we whipped back up to Mendoza for an afternoon´s wine tour around some of the regions best bodegas before hopping on to a night bus to Bariloche where we were treated to an incredible electric storm over the Andes.