Up in the mountains (Palo Verde)

Some tourism students from the uni a few weekends ago offered to take me and Matt up into the mountains. After waiting 45 minutes for them to show up (this is becoming more normal to me now after many a long wait...), we began the MISSION to get there. After having already taken a bus to the meeting place, we proceeded to take 2 more buses, then walked across a railway track and through a market in search of the place we were supposed to find a truck to take us up the mountain. After much wandering around the hot streets of Ciudad Mendoza we eventually came across the place and hopped into the truck. Well, it wasn't really as graceful as that, more scrambled into the back of the truck on squished ourselves up onto the two little benches. The journey wasn't very nice. The road was rocky and dusty and you had to take a lot of care not to bash your head or your back or your elbow onto the heavy metal bars keeping the shelter thing up. As we ascended, people would get off the truck and head to their secluded little houses on the mountainside, whilst we stayed on right until the end and got off at the top by a tiny church. The views were incredible, not only of the valley but from that mountain you could see clearly all the other mountains around.

We walked along a little trail experiencing similarly stunning views of the valley, whilst admiring all the beautiful nature around us, scrambling through purple flowers taller than us. However, I was slightly distracted from the views for much of the walk because Carlos, one of the students, had told us we had to watch out for snakes which could be around. Luckily, however, the most dangerous animal we saw was this strange green fellow, not quite a worm, not quite a caterpillar:

and later on, we did hear the bell of somebody's seemingly very free-range goat wandering around the bushes.

We stopped for a picnic at the Piedra del Aguila (Eagle Stone), where we could hear what was apparently an underground waterfall. It was a really lovely sunny day so we sat for a while soaking up the rays, then headed on to some tunnels through the mountain. Here's a photo of the group (minus Carlos, who took the photo) outside one of the tunnels:








We then strolled back to the place where we were supposed to get the truck back. HOWEVER, since we were not at a terminal, every truck that went past - and these were scarce - was full. During the hour's wait for a ride back down the mountain (a nice man with his own truck luckily offered us a free ride which was very kind of him), I took more photos. These are some of the best of the views: