#150 Argentina – Mendoza, welcome to Italy

I enjoyed my stay in Chile especially in Santiago and Valparaiso. There are many other places to go visit, hopefully I’ll get a chance to see them some other time.
I came to realize especially on this trip, in order to see Latin America, it is better to have your own transportation. There are many things to see and sometimes buses, which are considered the most common and least expensive method of traveling won’t be as convenient if you wish to see many things. In 2011 when I set to travel around the world I thought I could do it in one year, now I realize it’s a life long journey, no wonder that some people spend 15 years traveling. I am realizing that I need to spend more time in every place, to understand the people, the culture and to make this wonderful and blissful experience worth the time and effort.

I took an 8 hour bus trip from Santiago, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina. The trip goes through the Andes Mountains, once we started to approach Mendoza we started to see fields and fields of vineyards, olive, peach and apple trees. The streets and highways are well constructed, and the landscape is very Mediterranean. Then when I started walking towards the hostel and looking at people who were sitting and chatting at the restaurants’ tables on the sidewalks you feel you’re somewhere in Southern France or Italy. Then you see the cars which are mostly Europeans, and the way people dress and express themselves and their gestures and it’s easy to realize that Argentina is very different than all the other places I visited in Latin America so far. It’s more Latin European than Latin American.

I woke up the next day very tired, although I thought of spending only one day in Mendoza, I decided to spend a couple of days to let my body relax a little. I’ve done a lot of walking when I was in Santiago, Chile and with the bus trip I guess my body needed some rest. So I spend the days walking the streets and getting an hour trip outside the city to see the vineyards and the olive trees.
Argentina was conquered by the Spanish but many Europeans especially from Southern Italy immigrated her, and now they make the majority of the population of Argentina. I went to visit some of vineyards and olive farms, and when I asked the owner whether the olive trees where original of this part of Argentina, she confirmed that the first Southern Europeans who came here started all of this. After all these years, Argentina is now considered a major exporter of wine, olive oil and many fruits and vegetables that are typical of the Mediterranean diet.

For anyone traveling to a country that its currency fluctuates very often and has unstable economy, I have a little tip, bring dollars or Euro, and then you can exchange them here in the black market. I usually don’t withdraw a big amount of money when using the bank machine because I travel in buses, so I thought it’s always safer to travel with little cash. But when I was in Chile, I withdrew big amount because I missed calculating the exchange rate and the bank machine confused me because they had dollar sign beside the amount. So when I took the money I was a bit concern to travel with a couple of hundred dollars, but as they say, things happen for a reason. When I arrived in Argentina, I went to convert the money from Chilean to Argentinean and I was surprised, they were offering me an exchange rate better by almost 65% than what the official rate was.

Argentina is going through very difficult economic times, they have defaulted on their debt and this is the second time in almost 10 years and as a result the Argentinian peso is losing a lot of its value and the government is putting some restrictions on exchange rate, so banks are obligated to follow the official rate but in there’s a black market and they’re everywhere you walk, you hear people saying “cambio” which means exchange. But you need to be careful because sometimes you might end up with fake currency.