Olive Oil Factories, Wineries, and Fun in Mendoza

Olive Oil?-- Who Knew olives could be strikingly interesting? Definately not this writer. We arrive at PasRai, with the expectation that this is the most random tour ever. But really olive oil is pretty 'cool.' The factory uses a large granit stone to mash the olives and the pit into a paste. Then the paste is put on a metal wheel and put under a hydrolic compressor that squeezes all the juice and water out of the paste. The dry past is sold to 2nd rate companies that makea poorer quality olive oil. Then the water and the ail are seperated and the oil is filtered. This company even makes hand lotion out of the olive oils because of the high concentration of vitamin E. Though I may still pick the olives off of my muzzarella pizza in Buenos Aires, I have a new respect for what they can make!

We spent a day shopping and exploring the city of Mendoza. Of course shopping time, meant calling home to mommy time. The thing that dumbfounded me the most was the at 2:30 in the afternoon the streets were closed, and no stores were opened. I later found out that stores do not open until 4:30 to 6:00 because of their lunch break. It was definately a change to stores in the states on Saturdays. In an attempt to save a few pesos, I ate a cheap lunch, AMERICAN STYLE. Of course it was Subway! But here the slogan is not eat fresh, it is eat rich, and eat healthy!

Once I left Mendoza, I was headed for Santiago Chile, but first I had to do one thing, cross the Andes. Never in my life did I expect to get to see the Andes mountains. I always thought it was a mountain range beyond my means of ability to travel. But yet again, I have proven new and exciting things to myself. As we drove into the Mendoza, we saw the snow-capped mountains in the distance, but now we were driving right through them. We ventured off from Mendoza to Santiago at 7:30am. We started in a typical semi-cama bus with two hippies in front of us. One, in which, who had dreds that overlapped onto our seats. We made our climb up into the Adnes. They stretched out as far as the eye could see from North to South. We went through tunnel after tunnel and hill after hill. Slowly we made our way to Chile. Then.... POP!!!! Our tire decided to blow out as soon as we crossed the Chile border! There we were a group of foreigners stuck in the middle of the Andes with no cell phone service or transportation! It was like a scene straight from the Hills Have Eyes. We arrive at immigrations, only to be harassed because we are traveling on an American passport. The immigrations officers wanted to take my temperature to make sure I did not have Swine Flu. I told them NO, I had been living in Argentina for two months now. They kept insisting. Finally, with very poor Spanish, I got out of getting my temperature taken! Then because our bus was broken we had to bored a 'school bus' for another 3 hours. It was hot, and dusty on the bus, and there wasn't even enough room to sneeze properly! We headed down the steepest, most winding and dangerous moutain roads!