Holiday trip to Argentina - 1. Stop Mendoza

Mendoza....fourth largest city of Argentina. But wait, didn't I tell everybody I would be in Muscat for Christmas? Most of you probably thought that I had spent my holidays in Oman, riding camels. But no, shortly before we made our booking final C got the chance to spend a couple of weeks in Malargüe at the Pierre Auger Observatory for cosmic rays (http://www.auger.org/). So off we went to Argentina to spend at least Christmas together. We stayed a couple of days in Mendoza before C left for Malargüe.

This is a view of Mendoza from our hotel window; quite nice with the Andes in the background, isn't it?

 

Mendoza is, despite the arid environment, astonishingly green. A clever artificial irrigation system with canals traversing the city makes it possible to sustain a lot of parks and shrubbery for the city dwellers.

 

Around the central Plaza Independencia, which are  brimming with life at nightime (street vendors, street shows, restaurants all around it) are four corner parks which are a bit more modest. One is the beautiful Plaza España with it's typical Andalusian colourful tilework:

Music and Art obviously are playing a major role in Argentinian life. You can find art on the streets (here in front of our hotel)

 

and inside the hotel:

This piece of art reminds you quite distinctly that Mendoza is first and foremost a wine cultivation area. There is probably the very popular Malbec wine in this barrel and someone had mercy and shot it. You can tell, I am no fan of Malbec wine. Even the French, and Malbec originated in the Bordeaux area, used Malbec only for blending ... or vinegar ....or probably tourists.

But back to the parks of Mendoza. The largest one is the Parque San Martin with a large artificial lake in the middle. With the views of the mountains it is quite beautiful, don't you think?

You can walk along the alleys and marvel at the tree art, an art form which is sadly a missing element in archaeology :(

and just for the fun of it, a close-up:

M was happy because there are a lot of really old wrecks cars in Mendoza.

That little doggy was happy because we gave him some water on this hot and sweltering day:

At the corner of the Parque San Martin is the Museum of Natural History and Anthropology Juan Cornelio Moyano (what a terribly long name). It was built in the 1930s and is featuring a distinct yacht style (not 'yatch', as a one could read on a spanglish website).

More about it's innards tomorrow. So prepare for a tiny bit of archaeology. But it won't be a lot since I have produced an off-shoot, a blog-baby, where I can wholeheartedly blog about archaeology (unfortunately it is in German because there are already a mass of good archaeology blogs in English but not that many in German) http://torwen.wordpress.com/. It is still in it's infant shoes but we will see....