Malargüe

    This weekend I planned a trip to Malargüe, which is in the southern part of the province of Mendoza. It's a small town in the middle of the mountains with not much to do there except enjoy nature because it's full of really neat rock formations, volcanoes and lakes. Bus tickets were cheap and it's only six hours away, so 5 other chicas and I left early Friday morning (6 am), and were pleasantly greeted in Malargüe by a downpour of snow. Luckily we were expecting cold weather, so we were prepared with warm clothing, but it put a damper on our plans because it made finding things to do a little harder.
    A lot of excursions had already left by the time we arrived on Friday, but we found one half day excursion to Volcán Malacara. On this excursion we met Tal, our new friend from Israel who was traveling all over south America for three months. With him, we all decided to try to rent a car for the rest of the trip, because split between the 7 of us, it would be a lot cheaper than paying for day excursions with travel agencies.  This turned out to be a great idea; we saved so much money over the next two days, and got to see so much more in the area, and on our own timing as well. Tal was the only one who knew how to drive a manual car, so he chauffeured all of us ladies around for the weekend. Turned out that the one car rental place in town only had one car to rent and it was for five people; we had 7. So we tried breaking up into groups. It was chaos making our plans the first day because some people wanted to try to ski since we were an hour from Las Lenas, the best ski resort in South America. We eventually found out that it was closed, which is expected since it is the end of the season, so we decided to cram all of us in the car for the day. It just happened to be a Fiat, which barely fits five comfortably. But we are all skinny and double buckled so it was relatively safe. The lady at the car rental place casually told us we can put 7 in the car, just don't get caught by the police or in a wreck.

How many people fit in a Fiat?

    So we found the most comfortable way to squish in the car, and headed up to the north part of Malargüe for the first day, to La Leguna Niña Encantada and el Poz de las Animas, and las Castillas de Pincheira, and to see Las Lenas.The second day we headed south to see Las Cavernas de las Brujas and La Cascada Manqui Malal. Everything was really beautiful because it had been recently dusted with snow, and we kept stopping along our routes to take pictures of the mountain sides and the herds of chivos  (goats) being herded by the gauchos.

We found a great hostel in the city of Malargüe, and had fun bonding there are night with the other hostel travelers. We made family dinners, drank boxed wine, and got creative with making different kinds of desserts with dulce de leche. The funniest part of the weekend was at the very end of our trip, as we are headed back to our hostel after 2 days of no problems with our overstuffed car, we drive past a group of police, and as we noticed them, we frantically had two people duck. This was so obvious, and the police just started laughing and didn't even care. Yay, Argentina police officers! We headed back to Mendoza late Sunday night. Three more days and I'm leaving again for Spring Break!

Volcán Malacara
  

We took a 40 minute bus ride southeast from Malargüe and entered the national park with our guide to see Volcán Malacara. Malacara translates as "bad face", and it is named this because it resembles a horse's face when the horse has a white stripe down its face, and apparently this is considered bad. When this volcano erupted millions of years ago, it erupted violently underwater, and the water formed the neat pathways within the smooth lava. Our guide took us up a dried river bed and we got to wander inside the pathways that were formed during the eruption. Each layer in the rock represents a distinct eruption. We also saw bombs of lava that had flown through the air and landed farther away and hardened. And many pieces that had broken off from erosion after the eruptions. The volcano collapsed after its last eruption when there was no more magma left underground to support it, caving in the main magma chamber. We walked through all of the pathways, finding neat caverns and cavities within the volcano, and from one of them we could see a part of the original magma chamber that had been caved in on. Our guide during the tour was hilarious, he kept telling us that the only rule was to not fall, while we climbed all over the lava. And he told us that he was taking us to a special part of the volcano not all groups got to see. Then we saw another tour group up there. We found out he was a poet too, so he recited a poem he wrote about the volcano. Audrey told him she would translate it for him if he sent it to her. Nearby the volcano is a space observatory station, one of only three of its kind. We were bummed that it was so cloudy while we were there because we thought maybe we'd be able to see some great stars in Malargüe.

La Laguna Niña Encantada

 This lagoon was even prettier with the snow surrounding it. The water is surrounded by volcanic rock, and it was home to many different kinds of fish and birds that were making the loudest and most interesting noises. 
There is a legend about the lagoon that says that Princess Elcha, from one of the local tribes, was supposed to marry someone from another tribe in the region to make peace between the two tribes, but she was in love with a young man from her own tribe. They escaped together and found the lagoon, but when the people who were perusing them caught up to them at the lagoon, Elcha and the man jumped into the freezing lagoon together. There was a witch at the front of the group chasing them, and the legend says that when they jumped into the lagoon, this produced a ray of light that froze the witch into rock. There was a shrine for the princess at the lagoon where people had left flowers and similar offerings to her.

El Pozo de Las Animas

 
We got to see these two water formations that translate as "well of souls." The sign at the site explained their formation: they were formed by limestone and gysum dissolution in underground cavers in karst topography,  and then the roofs caved in and formed these sinkholes of water.

Las Lenas

It really was disappointing that we couldn't ski this weekend. We weren't even planning on it, but then randomly decided we wanted to the night before going to Malargue. So once I had my hopes up, I was disappointed that the resort was closed. I didn't go on the trip a few students took to Penitentes to ski one of the first weeks in Argentina, and somewhat regret that I can't say I've skied the Andes. But we did drive to Las Lenas and one lift was running, but there wasn't enough snow to even go up a few hundred feet. 

Castillos de Pincheira 

 This rock formation looks like castles. Normally you can hike up there but it was freezing and the ground was covered in snow, so we only took pictures. There is a restaurant at the bottom where you can barbeque and eat chivo, but it wasn't open because it was so cold. 




Caverna de las Brujas

 The "witch caves."  We drove down south of Malargüe for our last day there, and took a tour of the cavernas. We had to hire a guide for this excursion, which was complicated because the tourist office wanted us to drive the guide to the caverns ourselves. We definitely couldn't squeeze another person into our Fiat, so we were struggling to be able to book a time where there would already be a guide there. After much confusion, it ended up working out, and our guide showed us around the witch caves. We crawled through really small tunnels, up ladders that had been placed in the caves, and got to see really neat formations of stalactites and stalagmites and columns within the caves. They are all limestone formations, and the guide told us about transparent spiders that live deeper within the caves. We got to explore 200 meters of the caves that extend for 6 km.
We learned the legend of the caves: Two white women were captured by the local tribe. The women escaped and hid in the caves. They were injured from being captured and their cries of pain made the local tribes believe there were witches in the caves.






Cascada de Manqui Malal

This waterfall was right outside of Malargüe on the property of a family who has a restaurant and gives tours of the cascade. The guide took us up the river towards the waterfall, and in the riverbed are all sorts of rocks covered in fossils of old sea life. There were rocks covered in snail fossils and oysters too. Malargue used to be underwater, as we discovered with the volcano too, so there are all sorts of fossils in the region.
We were able to walk up behind the waterfall too to sit in a little cave behind the waterfall. The family had two dogs who live at the restaurant and follow the groups up to the waterfall 10 times a day. They were the most energetic puppies I'd seen, play fighting each other for the entire hike, but at the top of the waterfall just passed out on the rocks in front of the beautiful view.