Mendoza Province

Mendoza is a warm area in the east of Buenos Aires, at the footh of the Andes, the mountains that form the natural border between Chile and Argentina. The first days in Potrerillos (at 80 km from Mendozw City) I only slept and hung in the sun, I was really fed up with the big city. Thanks to Gianni, I could stay in Oso´s house together zith other rafters like Peludo, Lenka and Marius. The house had a view on the blue lake and was surrounded by mountains, the Uspallada mountains. Potrerillos is next to the highway to Chile and goes through the Alta Montaña...beautiful!

The mountains here have no trees, just low shrubs, grass and sand. The air is dry and dusty, hqrd to keep your feet clean ;) On of the first evenings the moon was almost full and rised from behind the mountain in front of the house...very nice.
Uspallata is the next village in the direction of Chile and I advise hikers to stay there if they want to visit aconcagua park. According for a Nepalese guy I met here, this village was the scenery for the movie Seven Years in Tibet.

The town is small, cosy and very green compared with the rest of the area. The route by bus is magnificant. A bit further I visited Puent del Inca, an old sulfer bridge on the path of the Inca's. I was told that at night you can cross the bridge and climb under it to swim in hot water and to camp in a cave. The bridge has been closed since 2005 to keep the bridge as it is.

The Alta Montaña of the Andes is dry, rough and high...if not gigantic, nothing like mountains in Europe. Colours are grey, red and yellow, not plants or trees...just rocks and dust. Maybe some cacti. A great riverbed made its way through the valley, but the river floating there now is small, probably bigger in spring, but still small compared to the riverbed.

As I was staying in a house full of raft guides, I could not escape from the fact that I should go rafting. On Friday evening we rafted to a abandoned train station, ate bbq and drunk to much red wine. We slept under the stars and the next morning we rafted 1,5h back to the basecamp of the company. It was great! To raft on this Rio Mendoza in the upcoming sun was a unique experience...this river felt a lot more relax then the one in Sjoa, Norway. There was a lot of water coming down and we heard the rocks rolling on the bottom of the river: I fell out the boat one, and normally I panic a bit, but I was hugging the boat again...as friend teached me during my Pingo career. ;)

We had another bbq on the last evening I spent in Potrerillos and the morning after I left for Malargue. This town offers a lot of excursions to caves, valleys, volcano areas, ... my plan was to visit La Payunia for the volcanoes, but I fell sick and had already booked my bus to Bariloche.

I left Sam and Gianni in Potrerillos and will meet them at Futafest, beginning of March. It is the rafting event of South America at the Futaluefu, near Trevelin.