After volunteering for three weeks it took a couple of days to re-adjust back to the travelers lifestyle; we missed the dogs but were happy to be out exploring again. We decided to spend a few days in Mendoza seeing the sights. We totally lucked out when Nicolas from Posada invited us for a day sight seeing Mendoza with him and his friend Esteban (same guys that had the Asado for us). We met the day after we left Posada at the main square near the fountain. We were happy when we saw them and began our tour. We walked up Sarmiento Avenue and entered General San Martin Park. Mendoza has a huge parkspace in the middle of the city. Inside there is a University, Cerro de la Gloria, running and cycling lanes, and a huge ritzy sports club. They took us up to Cerro de la Gloria where a famous statue sits representing the liberation of Argentina, Chile and Peru from the Spanish. We really enjoyed the history lesson Nicolas and Esteban gave us. Read more about General Jose de San Martin and what he did for the people of South America here. After leaving Cerro de la Gloria we headed deep into the heart of the park to take a relaxing stroll through it and get to know some of the areas. We spent the remainder of the day hanging out at Esteban's house playing Truco and relaxing. Then we headed out for a few drinks at a nearby pub. Nicolas and Esteban gave Courtney and I Argentinian scarves to keep us warm on those cools nights in Africa! Thanks for a really great time guys! We look forward to seeing you in Canada in the next few years! If you're going to do anything in Mendoza, it has to be a wine tour! The region is known around the world for its wineries! We got some advice to rent bikes at a place called Mr. Hugo's and so we went there and were pleased to find out that there was a tandem bike available to rent. Surprisingly, tandem bikes are really tricky to ride, but once you get the hang of them they are great! You can get going really fast! First we visited the Wine Museum and did our own self-guided tour. It was pretty cool to see some of the things that were used to make wine back in the 1800's! After our little walk around we got to sample our first glass of wine. After the wine museum, we biked over to an Olive farm where they make all kinds of goodies from Olives! Our favourite was an olive and chardonnay mustard....so delicious! We also sampled some liquors that are bottled at the olive farm. We tried a few good ones and then we tried one that tasted like smoking a pack of cigarettes! Seriously though, that's not a joke. Next we visited a boutique winery called Vistandes. We learned a lot during this tour because the guide was quite thorough in explaining the processes they use at their winery. We learned that 2007 and 2008 were excellent harvest years and so wines from those years a more expensive and more sought after due to their quality. Vistandes only produces a small amount of wine in comparison to other companies and they only export to certain parts of the US and Argentina. During the aging process they use two types of barrels to hold the wine, American oak and French oak. The latter of which creates a stronger smokier flavour that both Courtney and I loved! This particular winery only reuses their barrels 3-4 times whereas some wineries reuse barrels 5 times and up. During our tasting we really enjoyed their Carmenere, from the 2011 Reserve which spent about 6 months in french oak. Vistandes produces three main types of wine: a young line, which spends a little amount of time in barrels before it is sold, a reserve line which spend more time in barrels and upwards of a year bottled before it is sold and finally they have a big reserve which is in barrels for around 8 or more months and then spends up to 2 years in bottles before it is sold. That's their really good stuff. The next place we visited was the oldest winery in Mendoza known as Familia di Tomassi. Back in the 1800's an Italian family immigrated to the Mendoza area and started the winery and most of it still stands today because its protected as a heritage site. Time was starting to run out as we still had a one hour city bus ride back into Mendoza and we had to catch a bus to Buenos Aires so we made one more stop to a winery called Tempus Alba, another family owned winery in the area. We did our own self guided tour and finished the day with a glass of their tempranillo reserve wine and enjoyed a peaceful sunset.
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After about a 3 week break from blogging we've accumulated enough photos, video and text to make up for it! La Posada del Monje (www.laposadadelmonje.com.ar) is a hotel and a domestic animal rescue located in a small town, San Carlos one hour South of Mendoza. We had found the rescue through a volunteering site called workaway.org. Andrew gave me a workaway membership for my birthday and it has been very useful in searching for volunteering opportunities around the world. We were obviously interested in La Posada when we read there were over 50 dogs looking for love and care. We emailed the owner, Cristina, and were happy when she said she needed a couple volunteers to help out. We arrived in San Carlos on a Tuesday afternoon, not knowing where to go we got off at the main bus station. After finding out that Posada was a bit of a walk we took a free ride from one of the young bus station employees on his way out for siesta. Walking up to the gates of Posada we were greeted by over 20 dogs all barking and excited to make our acquaintance. We then were introduced to Cristina and offered a delicious chicken and squash lunch with wine and French bread. We were relieved as Cristina speaks some English while everyone else spoke only Spanish. Cristina told us to take the day and rest and we would start work the next morning. After lunch we got to know the grounds and the dogs. The work is mostly the same each day so we’ll give you a rundown of how each day goes. We wake (we have a private room in the hotel) at about 8:00am we all (Cristina, Lina, Nicolas, Annabel, Maribel, Marie, Gustavo, and any other person on the grounds) sit down for breakfast around 8:30am. Lina prepares every meal; she is a professional pastry chef, a longtime friend of Cristina and together they are opening a new restaurant in the main plaza (two blocks away from Posada). After we cleanup we prepare the dogs food. Every morning the dogs get fed warm rice, some vegetables and some sort of protein (eggs or meat breakfast). It looks and tastes pretty good! We were impressed at how big the pot is to feed over 50 dogs. Andrew feeds and cleans approximately 25 dogs with Annabel (the dogs in the pens on the other side of the small river), while I feed and clean the other 25 with Maribel. The routine was a bit tricky to learn as the girls only speak Spanish so for the first time there was a lot of pointing going on but now we are able to feed and clean on our own. After morning feeding we let most of the dogs run free (the only ones that stay penned are really aggressive with the other dogs). In the first few days we really worked on learning most of the dogs names and getting to know each one individually. After we clean and feed we help with maintenance, cleaning, laundry, fixing dog beds. Then around 2:30pm all sit down again for the biggest meal of the day, lunch. Usually it consists of ensalada, and a carbohydrate, sometimes with meat and sometimes not. Every meal we get French white bread, which is difficult to turn away so we’ve been eating lots of white bread. After lunch we clean up, and on most days get a siesta where we catch up on emails, relax or play with the dogs. After our siesta we continue helping out with whatever task is needed. At 6:30pm we feed the perros dry food, and place them in their individual pens. We always say to them “vamos a dormir” to get them to sleep. Then we feed the pigs (video below), which involves some yelling and chasing. After we clean again we have a couple of hours to relax and then our “dinner” at 9:30pm which most frequently consists of coffee, toast, cheese, marmalade, and butter. After dinner we clean up again and then get to bed. On a rather unique day we got to assist a veterinarian spay and neuter 10 dogs. Best pare of the day was when I (Courtney) got to neuter the last dog Philippe. It's was an amazing experience especially because he spoke only a bit of English. On another day we found three 1 month old puppies left in the bush outside the gates. They were covered in fleas and full of parasites. Cristina lovingly took them in, gave them a flea bath and treated their parasites. It was crazy the size of worm one of them pooped out the next day. We’ve loved getting to play with them, they are adorable. There is also another litter of puppies that nurse from PeeKee, a stray that lost her own pups but feed Bruna’s pups. Bruna is a dog that wouldn’t let her own pups nurse but now lets the new set of three nurse from her. It’s strange how things work out. On one of the days Christina arranged for us to visit her son-in-law's campo (or ranch) for a half day tour so that we could get to see a bit more of the countryside. It was a really nice gesture as Ernesto came and picked us up at Posada then drove us an hour to the campo where we took in a few of the beautiful sites, toured their accomodations for tourists, visited their beef cattle and horses and learned about all of the cool services they offer tourists in the summer months. Tierras Blancas is the name of the tour company that Ernesto and his family run. They do mostly pack horse trips through mountains from Argentina to Chile in the summer months. We would love to come back and do one of these tours with them. Check out their website for more info: www.tierrasblancas.com One of my (Andrew) favourite things that we did when in San Carlos was have an authentic Argentinian Asado (BBQ). Nico and his friend, Estevan, had an Asado while we were there to show us some true Argentinian cooking! The asado is a very, very involved BBQ. Instead of using gas or charcoal, the Argentinians burn wood and use the coals from the burnt wood to cook the meat. They spread the coals evenly underneath the grill so that the heat gets distributed. The meat cooks very slowly but we ate several courses throughout the night. We started out with chorizo sausage and blood sausage and then moved onto steak, chicken, onions and potatoes. It was fantastic! A meat lover's dream! After the asado we learned to play a card game that is very popular in Argentina called Truco. Its played with a spanish deck which neither of us had used before so it took some time to learn but it was a blast to play. To me its like playing a combination of euchre and poker where you are allowed to lie and cheat! We had a lot of good laughs! We also learned a couple different ways to drink beer. One way is with a little bit of orange Fanta added to it and the other is with peanuts dropped into the beer. Both ways are magical. We really enjoyed our time with the dogs and the physical part of feeding, cleaning, and maintenance. We have also really liked joking with the girls. Unfortunately we have found the language barrier to be just that, a barrier at times. It’s difficult as we had little free time to learn more spanish so we struggled with a few things. We would have loved to be able to chit chat with everyone else a bit more but have discovered through body language and actions that everyone is hard working and friendly. Over the weeks the number of full-time staff decreased, which increased everyone else's workload including ours and unfortunately our host Cristina became very ill (not getting out of bed or her house for a week). Under these circumstances frustrations grew. A few things we didn’t enjoy was the eating schedule (8:30am, 2:30pm, 9:30pm), not having much designated free time (or any days off), the amount of white carbs we ate, the little amount of vegetables we ate, and eating no fruit except what we bought ourselves. We ended up feeding and cleaning all the dogs except Cristina’s in the morning and evening. Even when there were problems with dog fights and dogs escaping help was not easy to find as everyone was always busy with other things. At times we felt a bit under appreciated for our help but we've realized that everyone was having a rough time trying to juggling a lot of tasks. Another difficulty we had was seeing the condition of some of the dogs. In the first week a dog got hit by a car; she was taken to a vet but passed away in the evening, which was very sad for everyone. One dog Julian in particular was in horrible condition. He was emaciated, but would eat; he could barely walk, had cuts and sores all over, and laid in his bodily fluids all day. When it was sunny or warm we could take him out to lay in the sun but in the last week he remained inside most days. A few days into the last week Courtney had stated her concern for him and that he needed to see a veterinarian. Nothing was ever done about it and unfortunately on our second last day we went in to feed him and found him lying on the ground stuck between two beds, seizing and chocking on his saliva. Courtney lifted him on to a dog bed and tried making him as comfortable as possible, and soon after he passed away. We were both very upset and thought it was awful having to watch him suffer the last week. We realize though that things are different in other countries and this is all part of the experience. We try to appreciate everything we are experiencing but glad that Canada has developed standards for the treatment of animals. A few nights we invited Señor Diego up to our room to sleep on the bed with us. Diego, or Heavy D, as we like to call him is a small black dog with a lot of personality. He growls a deep ferocious growl when he doesn't like another dog, he can jump about as high as a basketball player and when he gets excited he runs around you in circles like crazy! Also, when I (Andrew) asked Annabel if Diego would pee on our bed she said, "No, because Diego is a gentlman". Hence why we call him Señor Diego. One day Diego ran out onto the street and we were calling him back shouting, "Diego! Get back here!" I joked to Courtney that when we were calling the little dog half of the soccer players in the neighboring field probably turned their heads to see who was calling them. It got funnier when we heard the soccer players calling a teammate for a pass, "Diego, Diego!" We really took a liking to Raul and Philipe. In the mornings Raul and Philipe would hang out with us after they ate when we cleaned their pens. Then they would spend the majority of the day tracking us down wherever we were, even if that meant following us off the property. For the most part the dogs could find us even if we were in the hotel somewhere, even our room. A couple of times Raul entered through our window and we would often find Philipe sitting outside our window. Raul has a sort of cleft lip but we're not sure if he was in a fight or was born like that but when he's excited he flashes these little smiles at you and his teeth really show through his funny lip. It was as if he really wanted to smile, but was sort of embarrassed of his lip. Also because of his lip he can never really close his mouth all the way so he breathes through this little hole and it sounds like a small wind tunnel. Both Raul and Philipe were very easy going dogs. Raul would let us blow in his face all day as long as he could sit next to us and every time Philipe would get close to us he would jump up and wrap his little legs around one of our legs and when he got tired of holding on he would slide down the leg like a stripper on a pole. Whenever we would pick Philipe up, he would go totally limp in our arms and almost immediately start falling asleep. The personalities of these two dogs were so likable that we could never get mad at them, even when they were being a little bad! One day Raul ate all the chicken bones that were supposed to go to the pigs. Another day Philipe growled at every dog that came to us for pets. The video below shows how Raul would get in the hotel on his own. He's a pretty smart guy. We have a ton of photos so we uploaded them to our Flikr account for your viewing pleasure. You can check out the slideshow below! We aren’t huge fans of cities but we really liked Santiago. We felt safe and comfortable walking around at all hours of the day/night and found some of the areas of the city to be very modern and quite charming. The city is quite beautiful as it’s mostly surrounded by the massive peaks of the Andes but it’s also well laid out and fully accessible by public transit. The only drawback was that the city’s location in a valley caused quite the smog problem. We didn’t have any problems with it, but when we walked to a few lookouts we could see the orange and yellow glow of the pollution hanging low over the city. We were told that the city regulates automobile traffic to decrease the emissions on a day to day basis but it will probably take more than that to correct the smog issue. With a population of over 6 million people, a solution isn’t going to come easy. We arrived by bus from Pucon and hopped on the Metro to head into downtown Santiago to search for a hostel. Our bus arrived during rush hour so we had to wait for about 7 subway trains to pass before we were able to squeeze on with our giant travel packs. The people were very courteous on the subway and made a little room for us to get on and helped us get out when we needed to get off. We chanced upon a cool little hostel while searching for one that someone recommended. It was called Don Santiago and we spotted it because it had hostelworld stickers plastered on its door. We would definitely recommend this place to anyone looking for a chill and cozy place to stay. The owner is really young and the staff was super friendly and really helpful. We hadn’t really planned on doing too much in Santiago except meeting up with a friend (who lives in Santiago) we had met while trekking in Torres del Paine and meeting up with a an Aussie couple that we met in Ushuaia (we just knew that they were dying to see us, right Kai and Sarah!). We also had a bit of shopping we needed to do so we ventured out to a giant mall on our first day to get Courtney some new hiking boots as her old ones had started to disintegrate and were slowly destroying her feet one toe at a time. We found that prices for things in Santiago were actually quite similar to what we would pay for the same stuff in Canada! Neato! On our second day we got word that there was going to be a pretty large storm hitting the city on the weekend. We also found out that when it rains in Santiago it snows like crazy in the mountains to the east and so the border crossing to Argentina would likely be closed during the storm. In the following days as the rains rolled in we continued to explore a few different parts of the city; check out the pics below. Our friend Marcelo, who is from the South of Chile but now living in Santiago took us out for some drinks in the trendy neighborhood Bellavista. We had a great time and learned quite a lot about Santiago and Chile in general. Thanks for a great time Marcelo! We spent a day walking around Cerro San Cristobal, the second largest hill in Santiago and home to the city's zoo and some really amazing views...when its not cloudy and raining. It was pretty cool. We took a really old trolly/elevator/train (I'm not really sure how to describe it) up the hill to the zoo and then to the top. The zoo was actually quite entertaining. It had a pretty huge selection of animals and some interesting info about each one. Courtney enjoyed reading about the life spans and gestation periods of the various zoo dwellers. After the zoo we were starving so we made our way back down to Bellavista to find some grub at a local bar. This is where I stumbled upon Chorillanas. Marcelo had explained what a Chorillana was to me but I couldn't believe it until I saw it. French fries, sauted onions, fried hotdogs, fried beef and to top it off two fried eggs. I'm pretty sure these things are illegal in most countries. We had arranged to volunteer near Mendoza, Argentina for about a month but we were delayed leaving Santiago with the poor weather in the mountains. When we finally did leave it was the first day that the border between Chile and Argentina had been reopened and it was utter chaos. A drive that normally takes about 7 hours including the time to cross the border took us about 14 hours! Luckily food stands near the border were selling lomitos, hotdogs and milanesas to keep our hunger at bay. We arrived at about 12:30am into Mendoza and left early the next day to San Carlos where we are volunteering at an animal rescue shelter!
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