mendoza - parapente

note to self - eating too much choripan makes my mouth/jaw hurt. i had difficulty chewing the whole next day

Day 2 (Friday April 6)
- ask the hostel if there is any street fairs going on. their answer: no. and we believed them*, so we wandered around town with the majority of stores being locked up for good friday. however, we did manage to find one cute shop that was open and a gelato place with 4 different types of dulce de leche

smart cones! for 3 flavors!

- eat milanesa - a breaded meat fillet. this particular plate included eggs and fries. i suppose i had to try some meat while in argentina since i've heard so much about it

- ponder if it is more grammatically correct to use Argentine vs. Argentinean. this still hasn't been resolved, so if you have any insight feel free to comment.

- paragliding! rachael, dre, and i got picked up at our hostel in a janky truck by our guide who proceeded to drive us to the paragliding location. when he ran through slowly rolled through a red light i immediately realized something was wrong with the truck. he didn't want to stop the truck at the red light because if he did, there was no way it would restart. he kept shifting gears like mad and we were moving so slowly that tons of cars were passing us. at one point a biker was biking the same speed and i honestly could have had a short conversation with him. that's how slow we were going.

after spending 30 minutes putting along in a truck that was slowly breaking down, we made it! and luckily switched trucks to make the drive up the mountain from where we would be RUNNING off of! with parachutes of course.

here we are in the truck, trying not to let our driver/guide know that we were freaking out

while waiting to be driven to the top, some of us finally realized the difference between paragliding, hang gliding, and parachuting. but it was a bit of a struggle

eventually the three of us loaded up into a jeep with a few others. this is when we met a very young couple from minnesota who were traveling around south america before moving to portland, oregon. all i'm going to say is that the girl was pretty obnoxious and her boyfriend could do way better. harsh much? the only thing that i was entertained by was how she said "baeg/baig" (long A sound) in her minnesota accent instead of the way the majority of the english-speaking world pronounces it: "bag".

we waited at the top of the cliff with a huge group for about an hour before it was finally our turn to paraglide! dre decided to entertain herself by catching crickets.

rachael and andrea were chosen first and i was left waiting until they had already landed back at the top of the mountain. i'm not sure how the guides decided who they were going to take next, but i ended up getting lucky. i was one of the last people to go and i got to paraglide all the way to the bottom of the mountain and land at the base, instead of having to land back at the top and take a truck down to the bottom.

here we all are getting suited-up!

andrea

rachael

meee

as soon as the wind picked up, we basically ran off the cliff and were good to go! here are pictures of my take-off

i'm over there somewhere ...

woohooo!

paragliding was so awesome! you feel like you are just floating. i asked my guide if he knew any tricks or "acrobática". this was the coolest part. we were swooping in huge turns and went in an INSANELY fast spiral for a good 60 seconds. twice. i was smiling and laughing so much and we were moving so quickly that i drooled on my face a little. it felt like i was in a vortex.

the joke of the day that continued the rest of the trip: "we didn't even have to sign anything!"

in other words, there was never any waiver or liability form that we had to sign to allow us to go paragliding. there was also no group huddle or any information provided prior to paragliding. they literally just strapped you into the harness and to the guide and off you went! it would never be this lax in the united states.

while my friends were waiting at the top until someone could drive them down the mountain, they made friends with two Argentines/Argentineans and made plans to hang out during the evening. once we went back to our hostel, got ready, and on our third try finally found a place that sold pizza (false advertising at the first 2 restaurants we went to), we ate dinner and then took a taxi to meet them at some bar in the area of Mendoza with the best nightlife.

and a last minute icrecream run... is it bad that i've become accustomed to eating gelato twice a day?

*during the taxi ride to the bar, we drove past a really nice plaza with hundreds of tents set up with street vendors. i still find it extremely odd that our hostel did not mention this when we told them we wanted to go shopping. according to our taxi driver, i think next time we have to ask where the "hippie fair" is in order to be pointed in the right direction

the bar where we all met up was extremely crowded and we were in a group of about 25 people (lots of locals from Mendoza and a big group from France), so we all flocked to an empty bar across the street. we all sat outside and were soon brought these huge tubes filled with different types of alcoholic drinks. i'd never seen anything like this before but it was really cool and perfect for going out with a huge group of people.

Rapha with her beer tube all to her self hahah

racing to finish the tube...

i learned that the popular alcoholic beverage in Argentina is "fernet". it is made of herbs and various other ingredients and usually enjoyed after dinner.

around 1:00 am we all headed to a discoteca called Voodoo that seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere. it was really out of the way from the center of town but was a pretty fancy place to go out and dance. we all went in and it wasn't really poppin' yet, apparently the clubs in Mendoza don't get busy until 3:00 am! i was not okay with this considering we were all waking up at 7:30 am the next morning to do another excursion provided by our hostel. the club was fun but i didn't like how smokey it was and all my clothes reeked of cigarettes. they still do, actually, because i haven't washed them yet. nastyyyy.

i ended up going to sleep at 4:30 am.