Santiago to Mendoza on Three Wheels

This past weekend I went solo on my second trip to Mendoza, Argentina to renew my visa. My first trip I went with Camila and although there isn't all too much to do in Mendoza, it was a good time. I don't generally use the word lovely, but for some reason it feels entirely appropriate when describing Mendoza. As a traveler it isn't all that exciting and doesn't require more than a few days to enjoy most it has to offer.

There are nice wineries and hot springs outside of town, and nice restaurants, parks and plazas within the town. But beyond that it gets boring kinda quick. That being said, I can see it being a lovely place to live. Life here is slow and it seems like everything in town is closed most of the time. Stores, restaurants and most businesses seem to open between 9am and 12pm and then close from 2pm-6/7pm. Then they open again for a couple more hours, with restaurants staying open later obviously. Then on Saturday things have even less hours open and on Sunday, practically everything is closed.

It is a city that clearly doesn't take life too seriously, which is great. Beyond that, the weather is usually pretty nice and people seem quite happy overall. Oh yeah, and like all Argentinians, they love to party. Things don't kick off until after midnight, but parties easily go until 7am or later.

Being that I was alone this trip it was a little more boring than last time. I was exhausted after waking up early for the first bus to Mendoza which generally takes about six hours. This time, it took nearly 10 hours  due to a lazy wheel on the bus.

On the Chilean side of the border there are a series of around 30 switchbacks. At number 22 we were rounding the bend and out of nowhere there was sudden lurch to the left followed by a loud crash and grinding noise. We immediately came to a stop and we all climbed out to see what it was. The driver grabbed nearby stones to cram under the wheels to prevent the bus from prematurely heading back down the mountain. From the time the bus stopped moving to the time I was outside took about 45 seconds and once I was out there was absolutely no sign of the back wheel. The tire and rim was literally gone. Not sure if it shot off the side of the cliff or where it was, but it was gone.

A group of five men worked on getting the bus mobile while I went off shooting some photos. 45 minutes later we were on our way and then 15 minutes later we heard a loud thwap, thwap as the tire was working its way off the axel again. After stopping three times to fix the damn tire the driver finally started signaling other buses with free space to take us the rest of the way. So almost 10 hours later I finally made it to Mendoza and had little energy to do much at all.

At least it fell off somewhere with great views

The tire must be somewhere down there

The following day was Sunday, so everything was closed and the only area of activity was the park. So I headed there. One thing I really like about Mendoza, and Argentina in general is the number of old cars on the road. And I mean cool old cars. Most aren't in good shape but they still have a lot more character than a bunch of shiny new cars which dominate the roads in Chile.

I decided to take advantage of having interesting, stationary objects to practice a photographic technique I read about a little while ago called the Brenizer Method, first done by photographer Ryan Brenizer. I could describe all the details of the method but it would take too much time, so if interested click on the link above. It essentially involves shooting closer to a subject with a lens higher than 50mm(preferably even higher) at a wide open f stop of 1.8 or something similar. You stitch together a number of images to create a wider angle photo with a more blurred background(this is a very poor description, just Google it if you're curious). So here are a couple first attempts. These photos are only made with 3-4 frames (Ryan generally uses anywhere from 15-40 frames which makes a massive image) so the depth of field isn't super blurred like it could be. But it is a starting point!