San Rafael

    Our last program excursion was this weekend to San Rafael, in the south of Mendoza. We left early Saturday, and after three hours arrived on Valle Grande, a canyon in the mountains where we stayed in cabanas, dined on three course meals and felt like we were 12 years old in summer camp again. The tour agency our program used for the weekend treated us like middle schoolers on a field trip, and regulated everything we did, including prohibiting us to climb the mountains nearby, go into the river, climb this one hill that we went to at the beach, and pretty much to cross the street without holding hands.
    Despite this, our meals were amazing, including a salad bar full of meats and cheeses, empenadas, asado, pasta and milanesa. Each meal lasted probably two hours, followed by a dessert of either fruit or dulce ice cream. Of course each meal was right before we all had to get into swim suits to go to the beach on Saturday, and to go rafting Sunday, so our food babies got to go to the beach too. It was a really beautiful weekend to go with 80 degree weather and so much sun. We had a pool to hang out at, which was nice even if the water was freezing. And every 5 of us had a cabin to ourselves which was a very generous amount of room, with a kitchen and second floor balcony.
     The beach was a hidden sandy beach located on the bluest lake in the valley in which to get to we had to take a catamaran across the lake. The water was freezing, but laying on the beach and having no obligations was very relaxing.
    Saturday morning we went on a hike with the group in the valley to a very small and anticlimactic waterfall, but the surrounding mountains were gorgeous and full of color. The mountains here remind me exactly of the mountains in Grand Junction in Colorado; desert, bushy, no trees, but so many layers of color in the rocks and ground. The hike was a couple hours, and ended with us climbing one of the smaller hills, but the trail was all sand, so our tour guide thought it would be easiest to get down the mountain by everyone running down the sandy trail that curved throughout the mountain, and this was really fun running down the side of the mountain one by one.
    Saturday afternoon we had the option to either raft or do a zip line over the lake from the day before, but everyone chose rafting. We did an hour guided raft tour down the Atuel River, which was more like floating down a tranquil river with a few rapids here and there. I went rafting last summer and it was pretty tame, but this was even calmer, but we kept playing bumper boats with all the other IFSA kids in other rafts and got soaked by splash wars and even Dan jumping from raft to raft trying to take us into the water.
   We headed home late Saturday in the two vans that the tour agency had. I was so mad because one of the buses was really uncomfortable, and I got stuck with that one one the way to San Rafael, so I was trying to switch for the way home so I could sleep better, but we had to ride in the same van as the day before because they had a list of our names in case the van were to be pulled over by police and needed a passenger list. Argentina has many internal controls like this where police will pull you over to check everyone's identification. 
    It was a very relaxing weekend. We needed this as a break before realizing how much we have to start doing for finals and final projects.

Photo cred to Kaylee Schwitzer

Lad Cabanas: Photo cred to Kaylee

Lago in Valle Grande

Hiking up they valley