Sunday, we checked out of our hostel and took a bus to Cacheuta, about an hour outside of Mendoza centro. Cacheuta is not only a pretty mountainous area, but also home of hot springs. Hot springs are springs "produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth." They even have minerals that soothe your body! Clearly, we were excited to put on bathing suits during the summer for the 2nd time this entire trip and relax after our skiing experience.
A shaky bridge as we pulled up to Cacheuta
The Termas we went to weren't part of a spa, it was kind of like a public pool and park. Except 1000 times better because of the view. It only cost 35 pesos to get in, so less than $9 USD. We sat in the indoor and outdoor hot springs and let our bodies relax and become less tense because our shoulders hurt from skiing. A lot of the people there were from Mendoza, but there were a lot of tourists and Brazilians as well. At one point in the hot tub, someone would speak in Spanish, a Portuguese person would respond in English, and an American would translate it from English to Spanish. I never valued common language as a communication tool until this trip. Portuguese is easy to read, but hearing the accent is difficult to relate to the Spanish word. In the hot tubs, we made a lot of friends and spoke in Spanish with them. As Elizabeth put it, "We never catch a break! Let me relax!" They question us about Argentina, the USA, why we're there, etc.
Our new boyfriends...kidding
The four of us in the hot springs
By the mountain
After our couple hours of finally feeling like we got a summer, we got changed and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. We had a nice red-meat dinner at a restaurant with stereotypical slow Argentine service that aggravated me, TKM. With some time to kill until our bus back to Mendoza (to then get on a bus to Buenos Aires), Elizabeth and I climbed one of the mountains on private property. Beautiful view and a good workout!
Elizabeth and I, can you find her with her brown jacket?
We slept through the bus ride back to Buenos Aires and made it home safely and tired! Mendoza and Iguazú were both phenomenal vacations that cannot even be compared because both were so fascinating. It was a great last trip to take and provided some really great bonding and appreciation time for what we're doing. Now...to conquer the rest of Buenos Aires!
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