July 3, 2013

For our final full day in Mendoza, we wanted to get up close and personal with the mountains. Unfortunately for us, we woke up about two hours late to catch the bus out of town to the suggested trailheads. We were a little bummed leaving the train station with no adventures in store until Brent pulled out some spontaneity and a rough idea of how to get to a local summit, Cerro Arco.

It was too good to be true, we got right on a bus, rode it to the outskirts of the metro area, and were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Literally, not even a bus stop…. Had it not been for the white disco which Brent recalled from his online source, we would have definately felt lost. It was a miracle.

We saw our summit and headed for the hills. It was a beautiful day and a perfect warmup hike to get our meat eatin behinds into shape.

We made it to the top in just over an hour and made a funny discovery. Several locals with their burly trucks were trying to pull a corpse of a car our of the valley. How it ended, I don’t know but it was entertaining for the 30 minutes we stood by. We ate our standard kiosco lunch from an excellent vantage point at the top, and then began our ascent. Miraculously, we found our way back to the nonexistent bus stop and managed to catch a bus back into town.

On our stroll back to the hostel, I decided I wanted to grab some ice cream. We stopped in a helado shop not too far from the bus stop and Brent ordered a quarter kilo of chocolate and banana. Somewhere in the conversation, there was a mix up and we ended up with a HUGE half kilo tub of ice cream. We found a bench outside and ate our ice cream, giggling with disbelief at out most recent accidental purchase.

We ended up eating the remains the next morning for breakfast before leaving Mendoza and in honor of America. Happy 4th of July!