Mountains everywhere...

Since 10 AM yesterday morning, I've spent around 20 hours in buses. Because my mind is dull from wine, my legs are tired from climbing mountains, and my thighs are chafed from riding horses, I'm not in the mood to type a lot. Pictures from my trip to Mendoza (capital of the Mendoza province, West of Buenos Aires at the foot of the Andes) will carry me through this post.

Americans don't dress their dogs nicely enough.

They show everyone the winery, but you have to pay the big bucks to get to see the meth lab in the cellar.


This is where, after laboring for about 30 minutes trying to understand, in Spanish, how they make wine, you actually get to try the product.


Huge wine-holding devices.


Part of the wine tour was visiting an olive oil factory. What's more interesting than olive oil? Some of the murals painted in the factory's courtyard.


Wine bottling in process. Check out that cart full of bottles!


Bad news: I was bored enough on the way to horseback riding to try lying in the middle of the road. Good news: I survived with a photo.


This is me standing near the fire pit set up by the base camp for the horse people (what do you call people that take you on horse-driven tours?).


We only lost one person on the tour.


Ugliest dog I've ever seen.



The asado waiting for us after the morning riding session. We ate it at this table...

Wine, food, and laughing followed. Seriously, though, it was probably the coolest place I've ever eaten a meal.



I met Sarah Palin there.

One example of how beautiful the Andes are.

Seeing this really made me want to go skiing. I've only been twice, and not since 8th grade so that's saying a lot.


I think the idea was to get to the top of that thing.


This was the beginning of our 5-6 hour "trekking" experience from yesterday. Walking on the railroad was easy. Walking on the surface of three feet of snow? Not so easy.


A mountain stream I drank from and washed my face with.


View from (almost) the top.


Blogger's-eye-view up to the top of the mountain. It's tough to communicate in words on the internet how difficult this was both mentally and physically.


It was a really steep climb, but worth it if just for the photo opportunity.

Nothing like some mountain snow after a long hike.

It ended up taking much longer to make this post with all the pictures than if I had just written about everything, but I hope you enjoy it. I will write again later in the week, for sure.

Be easy.