San Rafael

Tamara, in her infinite wisdom, planned an excursion for a bunch of students from school for the weekend. San Rafael is a city about 3 hours away from Mendoza, but when I say "city" I use the word quite liberally. Really, what it is, is a little outpost with a gas station, a super market, and a few shops somewhere between Mendoza and Buenos Aires. The drive out to San Rafael was the first time I saw completely untouched countryside. Now I've been through the prairies of the midwest in Canada and the states, and seen what seemed like untouched land, but this was a totally different experience. The countryside here is really nothing but countryside. I didn't see a single electric line or road sign, or ANYTHING for almost the entire 3 hours of driving. It was just tumbleweed, some wild grasses, and a scraggly little tree here or there. The road itself was the only sign that human beings existed, but even it had a maximum of three cars on it.

We arrived in San Rafael and ran around running some errands (we bought food) before driving to our cabina on a lake about a hour farther away. It turned out the cabina was more like a private house, and between the five of us, the food and the house cost less than living in Mendoza for two nights. Schweeet.

Saturday night we had (of course) an asado once again. Every house on the lake had as very fancy, souped-up parrilla, because the grilling culture here is so advanced it would be a faux pas to offer up a house for rent without one. Tamara proved to be quite the cook, soaking the meat in a fancy marinade before putting it on the grill. Wow, was it yummy.

I, on the other hand, couldn't get over the beauty of the lake we were perched above. The water was a crazy shade of green, and nestled between huge mountains of rock and weeds. I actually thought at first that it was a quarry because of all the rock everywhere, but here, the mountains are just much dryer than in New York. In a lot of ways, they're like the mountains of Arizona - just less dusty. Check out the view.