Córdoba --> Mendoza

Today we drove from Córdoba to Mendoza, the wine region in western Argentina in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. All told, it was a bit under 10 hours in the car...with a few adventures along the way.

We left around 10:00am this morning after eating breakfast at the hotel. The first chapter of our route would take us due south for about 4 hours to the city of Río Cuarto, all on a ruta (standard road, traffic going both ways) instead of an autopista (divided highway). The reason, of course, is that no highway exists between these cities, despite the fact that they are both very large and well-trafficked. After some investigation as to why, I discovered that there are only 8 major highways in Argentina, numbered 1-8, and if you do not happen to be traveling in the direction of one of these highways, you're out of luck. Keep in mind that Argentina is only slightly smaller than the United States, so definitely has a highway shortage! In South Carolina alone--which isn't a big state--there are at least like 16 highways. I think they need some infrastructure here! 

So, much of our day looked like this:

Though at least some of our day looked like this:

Sometimes a couple people in the back seat got bored, and did this:

But when they woke up, it was time to play under the blankets with each other, which in this cold weather (we saw snow in places!) resulted in some series static electricity build up:

After finally making it to a highway halfway into our trip, our speed picked up and we made better time. Interestingly, different types of vehicles in Argentina have different speed limits along highways, as illustrated by the following photo:

Also interestingly, when you enter a new province (the Argentine equivalent of a state), you have to go through border patrol, which contains armed policemen (today we did this three times). Mostly, they peak in at you and wave you through. But one time they made us stop and they searched our trunk. I mean, it's all the same country, right? There was less security than this when we flew on an airplane to Iguazu Falls (remember, we kept our shoes and belts on, carried on water bottles and razors blades, didn't have to empty our pockets to pass through security, etc.). The check points look like this:

Finally, we made it to Mendoza. It was dusk, so the towering Andes mountains were only just visible in the distance. Tomorrow we expect to be awe-inspired!

After checking into our hotel--El Portal Suites along the Plaza Chile--we found some dinner at a cute restaurant one block over:

Then a "quick" trip to the supermarket, where 1,000 other people had the same idea. Every one of the 24 lanes was open, but there had to be 15 people in each lane. Except, of course, for the lane reserved for "personas ciegas y descapacitadas" (blind and handicapped people). That lane was wide open. Do a lot of blind and handicapped people go grocery shopping by themselves? So the grocery store took almost an hour, but we made it and were looking forward to a nice night's rest.