I only went in there in the first place as per a recomendation from a Couch Surfing friend Luciana. I wanted to sample their Dulce de Leche ice cream, but apparently you can’t get just one flavor. So I selected vanilla as my second choice. HOLY COW! Some of the best vanilla I have ever tasted!

So I returned the next day and ordered a mint chip and some vanilla. And again, the mint chip blew me away.

So I returned the next day and ordered a raspberry and lemon. Same results.

Before I left Mendoza, I made one last stop at the corner store for some more mint, and more delce de leche. I’ve had more ice cream here in the last 4 days then I have in the last year of my life.

So ya, if you make it to Mendoza, make sure to make a stop by Ferruccio Soppelsa for a cool down cone to see taste what I’m talking about.

Now that that is out of the way…

The other day I was wandering the streets of Mendoza to just sort of get acquainted with the lay of the land. Part of my journey lead me to Centro Cívico – Casa de Gobierno which is a government building where many city buses pass by.

As I walked past one of the bus stops, I noticed a few men placing used tires near the curb on front of the building.

I thought it was a bit odd for them to be placing tires there, but didn’t think too much of it until I saw a small fire inside one of the tires.

But even still nothing really dawned on me that anything was out of the ordinary. I did think it was a bit of a peculiar place to dispose of tires, but hey I’ve seen stranger things on this trip, so I walked on. I was sitting down on a bench at a nearby fountain when I heard this harsh crackling sound. I turned around and looked back over my shoulder towards the area whence I just left.

What had started as a small hand warming fire, had now spread across the full length of the sidewalk and the street was quickly becoming engulfed in thick black clouds of smoke!

I rushed back over to take some flicks…

…all the while trying to stay upwind from the fumes.

After about 10 minutes of ducking and dodging the swirling wall of smoke the bomberos finally showed up to put an end to the fun…

…turning the black smoke…

…white.

I was flabergasted that they didn’t want my assistance since I had just purchased a bottle of water.

After the smoke had cleared (literally) all that remained were the metal wire bands from the inside of the tires…

…and a few protesters that were responsible for the petroleum protest that were hauled off in a police car.

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people were protesting petroluem companies by burning tires, and then they get haulded off to jail in a gas powered police car rolling in 4 tires?

Yeah. Major bummer. I had been staying in what I thought was a relatively safe hostel here. There was a gate with a buzzer on it to get into the property. Everyone in the place was friendly. There were lockers. Above the reception desk were two plaques for winning ¨Safest Hostel¨in 2006 & 2007. So maybe I let my guard down a bit. Even despite hearing stories from other guests about thefts in Mendoza.

Last night I was feeling a bit drowzy at around 10:30pm so I took my laptop up to my room and watched an episode of The Office. After it ended I closed the laptop and slid it under my bed. I was in the corner bed on the bottom bunk so the laptop was the farthest from the doors that you could possibly put a laptop. And I was sleeping in the bed above it! It was a 6 person dorm, so there were 5 other people in there as well. But somehow at some point during the night a prowler snuck into the room undetected and managed to relieve me of my 15¨ Macbook Pro while I slept only inches from it. I guess I really was tired as I can normally sense humans in my personal space, even while sleeping.

After talking to other people in the hostel and the police, it turns out that 4 unscrupulous individuals (allegedly from Buenos Aires) checked into the hostel late last night and then went around pilfering rooms. At one point one of the girls asked to borrow some shampoo from a Canadian gal residing on the hostel. Being a Canadian, she naturally obliged and gave her some shampoo — at midnight. The girl then took the shampoo into the ping pong room. Note: there is no shower in the ping pong room. Then at around 3am the same girl was found IN the Canadians room. The Canadian (Sarah is her name) woke up to the same girl again asking for… shampoo! Right. Something is NOT right. These people also managed to pick 200 pesos out of the pocket of a passed out Hawaiian dude.

Anyways, long story short… I am now without a laptop and it totally sucks! I´ve been in a major funk the last few days and am now just trying to figure out how to cope without a computer. I wassoupset and depressed that I actually stooped so low as to eat at a McDonalds. Yes, it was that bad. I just wanted to see if the Mickey D´s could possibly make me feel any worse. Only slightly. Almost everything I had on the laptop is recoverable… except for ALL of the photos & videso from this trip! I guess it´s a good thing I was keeping this blog as those photos are still available. But there were some other gems that are just not replaceable. I guess I´ll always have the memories.

It´s actually pretty amazing that nothing else has happened to our laptops in the last 7 months. But we had heard all along that South America was going to be dangerous. Sure enough.

Word to the wise: Apparently knocking on wood has no effect in protecting laptops.

There must have been some small print I missed on that one.

*sigh*

Life goes on.

So taking that learning experience, I booked a 1st class seat on a bus from Mar Del Plata to Mendoza. It´s the only way to roll when you´re parking your butt in a seat for 18 hours! It´s not exactly airline first class, but it is nice. It´s like sitting in a giant lazy boy chair on wheels. The seats recline to almost horizontal so you can easily doze off. The food leaves a bit to be desired (yet more jamon e queso) but it´s tolerable.

The ride actually went be pretty quickly. I learned why the Argentinian flag has a sun on it… because the entire country is covered with sun flowers. And, once it got dark I saw the most amazing lightning storm that I´ve ever seen! So beautiful! And when I woke up, the bus was just pulling into the station at my destination. So, you get room and board, travel, and food all for the price of one ticket. Not too bad.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go practice my Spanish pickup lines.

…and wait…

…and eat while waiting…

…and wait…

…and compute while waiting…

…and wait…

…and wait to wait while waiting..

We waited for 5 hours for a delayed flight from Buenos Aires to Mar Del Plata. The plane was about the size of a torpedo, so I can´t imagine why it took so long to get here. There were about 2 dozen passengers, 1 flight attendant, and 3 cookies for us all to share as our in-flight snack.

Once we landed we took a cab to our new digs.

And I thought the hostel in Pucón was bad. That place was like the Taj Mahal! This hole in MDP was the worst hostel/hotel I’ve ever seen in my life. Straight out of a movie. Wooden panelling lobby with an overweight man behind the desk smoking like a chimeny. A homeless guy with filthy feet sleeping on the couch in the lobby. Giant 5 pound lead ingets attached to the room key to prevent you from stealing it. As if I’d ever want to come back here. Beds that were concave, a TV about to fall on the bed (maybe that explains the concaveness), dirty towels, constantly running water in the bathroom/shower, broken night stands. At least there weren’t any cockroaches! I’ll give them that!

Luckily my cousin Diana and her husband Gabe have a nice vacation apartment that they are letting us borrow for a few days. So we´ll tough it out in this non-roach infested roach motel and then live in luxury at the apartment. Thanks Gabe & Diana! You saved us!

Some might think of it as ugly graffiti that is just defacing public buildings, but I quite enjoy looking at all of it. From the colorful posters and stencil art…

…the the full on murals…

…to the hand drawn chalk drawings expressing dietary suggestions…

…and you can’t have street art without stickers on street signs.

One street vendor even re-created a Happy Tree Friends cartoon character and framed it to sell.

I tell ya they’ve got it all here. I definately want to come back again when I have more time to take it slower and take more photos.

I keep noticing a lot of similarities between California and Chile. Valparaíso reminded me a bit of San Francisco with it’s various different neighborhoods and it’s extremely hilly topography…

…with old houses…

…of various pastel colors lining the streets.

They also have a busy harbor on the Pacific ocean…

…and even electric powered buses that follow the power lines hanging overhead. That’s so SF!

A couple hills over from our hostel was the Naval and Maritime museum that we perused to kill some time…

…and kill some encroaching enemy warships.

We lost a few good soldiers in the battle, so we paid our respects at the cemetery a few hills away.

And then it was full speed ahead…

…back up another hill…

…via one of the many rickety funiculars the city has so that we could find some food.

On the way back to the hostel we got stuck behind this bus with UTAH license plates!

Now I REALLY feel like I’m back in California! What the heck is this thing doing here!?

We were sent on our way with a farewell escort…

…and then herded along in the right direction by some wild sheep…

…who as it turns out were not quite sure of the right direction themselves.

So, we went the other direction, and left them to figure out how to get back into their field.

About 10 hours later, we had made it back to Santiago and were now headed west on the 68 freeway to Valparaíso, only to be stung by a traffic jam. Moments after exiting the toll booth, we were stopped dead in our tracks by bumper to bumper traffic. And we were making such good timing too! Google Maps had clocked the entire trip at around 16 hours, and we were so close after having only been on the road for 10. So we sat, and we waited. Sat, and waited. Sat, and waiting. Sat, and waited for the clean up crew to remove a large vehicle that had crashed into the side of the wall in a tunnel through a mountian. Finally after we got out of now smog-filled tunnel, we made it to Valparaíso in about 40 minutes with only a few drops of gas left in the tank and a few drops of room left in the bladder. After driving in circles for a good 20 minutes trying to find the hostel, we finally threw our map out the window and followed our instinct. Ahh good ol instinct comes through again. At least we now have a working toilet and a shower! Totally worth the drive.

Scaling the active Villarrica volcano!! Now that’s one thing Queenstown does not offer!

We woke up at the crack of dawn and grabbed a quick breakfast before walking over to the meeting point. After suiting up with our gear, and throwing some snacks, lunch and water in a backpack, we hopped in the truck…

…ready to trek over 9000 feet to the crater…

During a rough and bumpy 40 minute ride to the base of the volcano the guides presented us with the option to take a ski-lift part of the way up.

HA! We don’t need no stinkin’ ski-lift! We’re warriors!

Oh crap, 9000 feet is kinda tall. On second though we’ll take you up on the ski-lift offer.

And with that, the ski-lift took us up the volcano a little farther — just to the edge of where the snow was…

…which meant it was time to strap on the cramp-ons so we could dig in to the icy snow.

Despite the icy/snowy conditions, within the first 45 minutes I was already peeling of layers of clothing to cool off.

This hike was no joke! The heart was pumping and the sweat was pouring. We forged ahead, zigging, and zagging up the mountain side with our pickax and cramp-ons keeping us from sliding all the way back down to the bottom.

We kept up a slow and steady pace for about 4 hours! Only stopping 3 times along the way to take a few photos of the volcano…

…as well as other nearby volcanos.

We stopped once more for a lunch break and a few more photos…

…and then continued on up and over the jagged icy rocks…

…that had some really cool ice formations…

…that formed an ice throne for me.

Finally as the 5th hour approached, we had reached the summit! Exhausted and tired, we clawed our ways to the tippity top of the volcano…

…determined to see the lava filled crater.

And while the crater was just too deep to see any molten magma, we could certainly hear the burping and gargaling lava, and smell the farting sulfuric fumes spewing from the pit.

The crater was gigantic! Take a look at the full size version of this photo:

and check out how tiny the people are on the leftern edge of the rim to get a sense for just how big of a whole it is. It’s one of only 4 volcanoes on the world that has an active lava lake in the crater! I wanted to see if I could get a better vantage point to witness some actual molten lava, so I hiked all the way around the crater, taking in some great views along the way…

…including some cooled off lava chunks…

…and some glacier wave formations.

Unfortunately, even from the highest point on the edge, I still wasn’t able to see deep enough down the hole to see any magma. If only I had a helicopter to see far enough down the hole!

After about an hour at the summit, it was time to head back down. We had two options, hike or slide. Since hiking would most definitely result in some blisters forming, we all agreed that sliding down would be the best (and most fun) method of descent. So we put on all of our gear again, and slide down most of the mountain on our butts.

It was SOOOO much fun! Some trails were faster than others, some more windy than others, but every single one was a blast!

It brought me back to my days of Topstone Dr. in Bethel, CT where we would spend hours out on the hill sleding down snow covered hills. Eventually after about only 40 minutes of sliding, we reached the point where there was no more snow to slide down.

So we footed it all the way back down the whole way that the ski-lift had taken us, and all the way back to the awaiting van. We all piled in and headed back to the shop where it was decided that we celebrate or accomplishment with a barbecue back at the hostel.

Ya know you’re in South America when BBQ meat tastes this good! DELICIOUS!

A great way to end the evening. Relaxing in the back yard with some steak, corn on the cob and a beer with our friend Villarrica looking over us from off in the distance…

..under a firey sky.

A great day in Chile!