Day 22. We get up today excited about our excursion up into the Andes this morning. The continental breakfast is just as bad as the one in Buenos Aires: sugar bread and fruit. All carbohydrates. We need some protein. Well, we’re not going to get that. The tour bus shows up and we climb in. After about 30 minutes of driving to hotel after hotel we are finally able to get on the freeway and begin the journey. The “tour guide” asks for a count of everybody who speaks English and only 4 hands go up. The couple in the front row seats, directly in front of us, is from Canada. Everyone else on the bus speaks Spanish. We learn today to check the fine print on your travel agent’s itinerary. Just because the description says “English speaking guide” doesn’t mean that she’s going to speak English during the tour. Our “guide” goes on for literally 10 minutes speaking only Spanish. Then turns to us and speaks to us for all of 1 minute. Then back to Spanish. We stop at a giant lake and everyone gets off the bus. We approach her and ask what we’re looking at and she tells us that this is Lake Mendoza.
We get the bright idea that we should go and chat her up. Maybe if she likes us she will take more time being a tour “guide” to us as well. We engage her in conversation until everyone has to get back on the bus. Our plan has failed.
Every time we get off the bus we are required to approach her and ask what it is we are looking at. 
We stop at a little snack shop / souvenir hut in the city of Uspallata.
We continue to one of the day’s main events. It is Puente del Inca. This is a natural stone bridge.
Very colorful and beautiful! Scientists suppose that in ancient times ice covered the river and acted as support for avalanches of snow, dust and rocks. So the dust over the ice over the river would have served as a path for the sulfurous water and petrified the surface, so when the ice melted, the bridge remained by itself.
We continue up the mountain and pass a checkpoint staffed by armed guards. We ask and are told that since this is the road between Santiago and Mendoza, it is heavily guarded. Against what? Who knows, she’s busy again.
We stop briefly as we get to a point where we have a good clear view of Mt. Aconcagua. For those of you who may not know, Mt. Everest is the highest peak in the world at an elevation of 29,035 feet. Then comes Mt Aconcagua at an elevation of 22,841 feet. The next highest peak in the world would be Mt McKinley in Alaska at 20,320 feet. People come from all over the world to climb this mountain.
We get the idea that the reason we are rushed here is because the armed guards will not allow a bus to stop and unload here. We must leave before they catch us. This is exciting!
We make it as far up the mountain as we are going to today as we stop in Las Cuevas, a small village where we have lunch.
We meet another English speaking couple (also fluent in Spanish) from San Jose, California at the lunch table. The buffet is alright as we are pretty hungry by now anyway. A guy comes along and asks what everyone wants to drink and brings the drink orders back. Denise gets up to walk around after finishing and Todd is still seated with most everyone else when the drink guy comes back around and tells everyone exactly what the drinks are going to cost today. The couple from San Jose translates this for Todd. The price is outrageous on its own - about $5 per soda. But when you pair that with the fact that everyone thought the drinks were covered with the package tour, there was a small uprising. “Including lunch…” means soda too unless it says “drinks available at an extra charge” or “sodas not
included” doesn’t it? Todd couldn’t understand most of his travel mates, but he understood what they were saying nonetheless. Most everyone stood up and started backing away from the very long table and spreading around the room. Todd followed this lead. Money was collected from a few disgruntled travelers but not from us, and about half of the others, as we filed quietly into the street and waited for our “guides” to arrive and unlock the bus.
On the return down, we stop at Pichueta Colonial Bridge. We exit the bus and the “guide” is too busy to tell us where we are so here you go.
Now you know what we do. We get back to the city and our bus saves us until near last. We realize that we’re about 2 blocks from our hotel when the bus pulls over and the “guide” asks us if it is alright to leave us here. We don’t care. It makes sense with the way the one-way streets are lined up. Almost everyone who has exited the bus has slipped the “guide” a tip we have noticed. When it’s our turn to get out we just give the driver a simple “gracias” and head away. She should know why there was no tip from us. Our agent is going to get a letter about this company.
We have seen a lot of pizza parlors since we arrived in Argentina. We decide that tonight we are going to try one. We hang out for a couple of hours at the hotel and then, after 8:00,
we go to the pizza parlor down the street. This would prove to be one of, if not the most, memorable dinner experiences of the entire journey. We enter at 8:15 and the place is empty. We sit in front of the jumbo screen television and watch a Bee Gees concert video. Our wonderful server comes to our table and gives us menus and, and even though she speaks absolutely no English whatsoever, it is no problem ordering beer. Ordering the pizza itself would be the sticking point. The great thing about this waitress is that she talks to us non-phased, as if she understands us completely and is merely responding in an entirely different language. She doesn’t flinch, she just keeps repeating herself and talking away like she’s talking with her friends. It is very challenging trying to communicate here. The entire menu is in Spanish. No English added. What are these toppings? We don’t want another bowl full of hard boiled eggs. Using the 30 Spanish words in his vocabulary, Todd proceeds to ask her which pizza is their #1 seller. Once this question is (we believe) understood by our gal, she speaks while touching 3 items on the pizza menu. She taps one of those items twice. We have a winner!! We order one of those. Now… there are 3 sizes available now for that pizza: 6, 8, and 12. Todd holds his fingers out in front of him and makes 6”, 8” and 12” circles and decided that 12” of pizza will do just fine. He doesn’t hear that Denise is telling him that those numbers are not inches - they are slice quantities. So, when the pizza
arrives and is HUGE, Todd is amazed and Denise has her “Told ya” face on. Looking back, Argentina being on the metric system should have come to mind when thinking about a 12” pizza. Well, 4 pitchers, 12 slices and 3 hours later, the Bee Gees have turned into Donna Summer and we call an end to the evening; returning to the hotel's deck to unwind and enjoy one last evening.
We get the bright idea that we should go and chat her up. Maybe if she likes us she will take more time being a tour “guide” to us as well. We engage her in conversation until everyone has to get back on the bus. Our plan has failed.
Every time we get off the bus we are required to approach her and ask what it is we are looking at. 
We stop at a little snack shop / souvenir hut in the city of Uspallata.
We continue to one of the day’s main events. It is Puente del Inca. This is a natural stone bridge.
Very colorful and beautiful! Scientists suppose that in ancient times ice covered the river and acted as support for avalanches of snow, dust and rocks. So the dust over the ice over the river would have served as a path for the sulfurous water and petrified the surface, so when the ice melted, the bridge remained by itself.We continue up the mountain and pass a checkpoint staffed by armed guards. We ask and are told that since this is the road between Santiago and Mendoza, it is heavily guarded. Against what? Who knows, she’s busy again.
We stop briefly as we get to a point where we have a good clear view of Mt. Aconcagua. For those of you who may not know, Mt. Everest is the highest peak in the world at an elevation of 29,035 feet. Then comes Mt Aconcagua at an elevation of 22,841 feet. The next highest peak in the world would be Mt McKinley in Alaska at 20,320 feet. People come from all over the world to climb this mountain.
We get the idea that the reason we are rushed here is because the armed guards will not allow a bus to stop and unload here. We must leave before they catch us. This is exciting!
We make it as far up the mountain as we are going to today as we stop in Las Cuevas, a small village where we have lunch.
We meet another English speaking couple (also fluent in Spanish) from San Jose, California at the lunch table. The buffet is alright as we are pretty hungry by now anyway. A guy comes along and asks what everyone wants to drink and brings the drink orders back. Denise gets up to walk around after finishing and Todd is still seated with most everyone else when the drink guy comes back around and tells everyone exactly what the drinks are going to cost today. The couple from San Jose translates this for Todd. The price is outrageous on its own - about $5 per soda. But when you pair that with the fact that everyone thought the drinks were covered with the package tour, there was a small uprising. “Including lunch…” means soda too unless it says “drinks available at an extra charge” or “sodas not
included” doesn’t it? Todd couldn’t understand most of his travel mates, but he understood what they were saying nonetheless. Most everyone stood up and started backing away from the very long table and spreading around the room. Todd followed this lead. Money was collected from a few disgruntled travelers but not from us, and about half of the others, as we filed quietly into the street and waited for our “guides” to arrive and unlock the bus.
On the return down, we stop at Pichueta Colonial Bridge. We exit the bus and the “guide” is too busy to tell us where we are so here you go.
Now you know what we do. We get back to the city and our bus saves us until near last. We realize that we’re about 2 blocks from our hotel when the bus pulls over and the “guide” asks us if it is alright to leave us here. We don’t care. It makes sense with the way the one-way streets are lined up. Almost everyone who has exited the bus has slipped the “guide” a tip we have noticed. When it’s our turn to get out we just give the driver a simple “gracias” and head away. She should know why there was no tip from us. Our agent is going to get a letter about this company.We have seen a lot of pizza parlors since we arrived in Argentina. We decide that tonight we are going to try one. We hang out for a couple of hours at the hotel and then, after 8:00,
we go to the pizza parlor down the street. This would prove to be one of, if not the most, memorable dinner experiences of the entire journey. We enter at 8:15 and the place is empty. We sit in front of the jumbo screen television and watch a Bee Gees concert video. Our wonderful server comes to our table and gives us menus and, and even though she speaks absolutely no English whatsoever, it is no problem ordering beer. Ordering the pizza itself would be the sticking point. The great thing about this waitress is that she talks to us non-phased, as if she understands us completely and is merely responding in an entirely different language. She doesn’t flinch, she just keeps repeating herself and talking away like she’s talking with her friends. It is very challenging trying to communicate here. The entire menu is in Spanish. No English added. What are these toppings? We don’t want another bowl full of hard boiled eggs. Using the 30 Spanish words in his vocabulary, Todd proceeds to ask her which pizza is their #1 seller. Once this question is (we believe) understood by our gal, she speaks while touching 3 items on the pizza menu. She taps one of those items twice. We have a winner!! We order one of those. Now… there are 3 sizes available now for that pizza: 6, 8, and 12. Todd holds his fingers out in front of him and makes 6”, 8” and 12” circles and decided that 12” of pizza will do just fine. He doesn’t hear that Denise is telling him that those numbers are not inches - they are slice quantities. So, when the pizza
arrives and is HUGE, Todd is amazed and Denise has her “Told ya” face on. Looking back, Argentina being on the metric system should have come to mind when thinking about a 12” pizza. Well, 4 pitchers, 12 slices and 3 hours later, the Bee Gees have turned into Donna Summer and we call an end to the evening; returning to the hotel's deck to unwind and enjoy one last evening.
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