This entry suffers from lengthiness

Causes for update: Mendoza & Semana Santa.

It started on Wednesday. My increasingly routine school day began like any other—toast with homemade jam and instant coffee. I ran up to school via my super-cool rattling bike to meet with my professor from Clemson about classes, dismayed at my wasted bike-induced transpiration when she asked me to come back in the afternoon and thus turned around and rode home in time for almuerzo. I ate. My host mom made me a cake because I was leaving. I love this woman. I packed some and headed back to plan my schedule for next fall (!) and to attend my one obligation of the day—a charla (chat/panel) on human rights. It was hard to follow but interesting to note that the tour guide from the day anterior, the one who was a desaparecido, spoke. Anyway. I then headed to DINO! Dino is a “supermarket” but oh so much more than that. It is actually a shopping mall with a little baby amusement park out front, a movie theater, and fresh groceries! I should run their ad campaign because I am in love with it. Anyway, I went with the two guys I would be traveling with and we got yummy fruit and miscellaneous items and this glorious slice of heaven is walking distance from my house so I headed home where fresh-made cheese rolls were waiting. Yep. My older “sister” had made a ton of these balls that are stuffed with cheese and pretty much incredible. I hung around for a couple of hours and then it was time to head to the bus terminal downtown. I made it there with my entirely too-large bag and was pretty awed. This place is a small (relative to real) airport, essentially. Larger than GSP, there were a ton of companies with their appropriate busses and excursions all over the country. Tickets are reasonable, especially if you are going somewhere close (The next town over is $AR 5 to ride!). At 23:00 we loaded our cochecama bus. Cochecama= the company’s best attempt at putting beds in a bus. The seats leaned back pretty far and there was a platform that folded out for your feet. I felt awkward leaning into the people behind me but my guy friends in front of me had no trouble fully extending. We met some boys from San Diego on the bus and were very pleased to be re-introduced to our native tongue. What was even better were the 80s music videos we got to listen to for the beginning of the ride. They had all the classic American artists, and I’m pretty sure I kept just about everyone awake with my amazing voice. I slept on and off until we got to Mendoza (stopping first in San Luis) at around 11 a.m. We had an hour to find our hostel and check in. We saved our money for a taxi and walked through the city to our address. My bags were heavy and it was kind of far but the city was awesome.

Mendoza is definitely my favourite place to have visited thus far. It has a central plaza with four smaller plazas at its corners. In between there are pedestrian walk-ways with shops and restaurants and travel agents. There were people playing music in the streets and everything was very clean. When we arrived at our hostel the receptionist didn’t seem to recognize the name with which we had put down a deposit and we waited half-expectant of being rejected and sleeping on the nice park benches. However, he found beds for us. The three girls stayed in a dorm of 10 beds and the boys next door in a similar set-up (We were supposed to have two rooms of two and three beds but we didn’t let it bother us). When we walked into the room the girls that had already staked the place stared us down. Apparently they were supposed to have their own room too. They were snobby Americans but we dealt. Five of them and three of us made eight, with two extra beds. Well, two more girls showed up together. And another girl. And then a guy. The total was either 12 or 13 for the 10 beds at one point but somehow we lost some people and ended up with 10. It was a mess but each night cost us $10, and there was a pool and a kitchen! So the first day we just hung out, ate, made salad and chicken for dinner and planned a trip for the next day… to go rafting!

We decided on the all-day rafting trip rather than the dinky hour-and-a-half one. It was awesome. They picked us up at the hostel in a van and took us to the mountains where rapids were formed by water flowing from melting ice at the tops of the Andes!! We rafted for four hours, with a long break in the middle. During the break we got to stop at an abandoned train station (the trains here no longer run unfortunately due to some kind of government mess). Anyway, the guides laid out a spread of fresh fruit and sandwich bread and lunch meat (they love salami here and it is sooo much better than the states) and of course a bit of Mendozian wine. It was an incredible lunch and we all looked very funny and extraterrestrial wandering about this ghost town in black wetsuits. We got to raft with two or three Australians, a Finnish man, some guys from Buenos Aires and a girl from Germany I think. We had the Finnish in our boat so our tour guide guided us in English. It was absolutely amazing. Our guide was really fun, guiding us onto a large rock so that we did a turn thing and almost sending one of our big macho outdoorsy boys into the water. No one in our boat fell in but two people in another one did—one was the guide!!! It was soo funny to watch him run along the shore to catch up. I heard that one of the guys in the boat threw him in—they were pretty rowdy. Regardless, I was way less scared than I imagined I would be and I can’t wait to raft again.

That night, needless to say, we were exhausted. We met up with the guys from Buenos Aires for pizza (Argentine pizza often has ham and big tomatoes and eggs on it) and then hit up the ice cream shop. They had wine flavoured ice cream. I couldn’t make it up. I returned to the chaos of my room and passed out. The next morning we hit up the bodegas (wineries). We were planning on doing the bike tour for four hours but by the time everyone got up and got together and we went to buy groceries and catch a bus, it wasn’t worth it. Not to mention we couldn’t find the place to rent the bikes. It had amazing ads in the city but was hidden in a small store at the actual location. Odd. Regardless, we walked from the bus stop to the first stop of the “tour,” which was actually a wine museum. We ate an amazing lunch that we had brought—two loaves of bread, apples, pear, two packs of cheese, two packs of salami, and cookies… for only five people. We were very hungry and ate just about everything except for one slice of salami, which we attempted to feed to one of many stray dogs wandering around. The second stop that we walked to was labeled “liquors, chocolates y dulces (sweets).” We liked the sound of that. Worth noting: They blasted Norah Jones when we walked in and a guide was like “I love her!” We got to see all of the liquors that they make and then we each got to try a shot. These liquors included chocolate, dulce de leche, mandarin, and Absinth (guess which one I tried). We also got chocolate samples. I think I might move to this place.

After catching the bus home and tired once again we wound up going to a Mexican restaurant with a friend we had met from France (and who was studying in English/ currently attends school in Buenos Aires). The Buenos Aires guys met up with us afterwards and we walked around the central plaza, which was full of people and fun things like magic shows. I got ice cream again. Tiramisu flavor is amazing PS.

Next morning: check out and back to the terminal. Our bus left at 10pm so we bought tickets to catch a bus to the mountains. Great decision. We arrived at this little town on the river that boasts a thermal spa and water park as well as amazing mountains. We ate some empanadas (yum!) and headed out to find ourselves a hiking path. (Who needs guides??) The guys we were with are very outdoorsy Southern men, so they were in Heaven. I must say I was too. We walked around some more abandoned railroad tracks then trekked up to a big Virgen figurine, from which we continued up a mountain for quite a while. It was beautiful. One of the girls in the group has arthritis so she stopped for a bit and we didn’t want to leave her so we didn’t quite get to the top but VERY close. We didn’t realize how far we had gone until we looked up and the cima was all of a sudden right there. We were all very giddy, and getting down was an adventure—you have no idea how steep something is until you try going DOWN. Haha. But we made it and spent the rest of the time checking out local artisan goods and wines until we hitched a bus back to the terminal and then another to Córdoba. I slept the entire way, even missing breakfast!! We got into Córdoba at around 8 and I walked into my house just after 9, after which I immediately showered and drank a coffee. I didn’t mean to but managed to sleep more—from 11 to 1. Pathetic. It was now Monday. We had classes off because of a national holiday of remembrance so I headed back into the central at around 5:30 to watch the historical march at 6. It was incredible. I am so glad I went. There were tons of blocks of people lined up—in the front are the grandparents of the desaparecidos, behind them the parents and behind them children—each had their signs with photos of their loved ones that they haven’t seen since the 70s and don’t know where are. After this group were independents, then political groups with their own flags and often chants, drums, etc. It was awesome. We stood and watched til the end and then walked back up to the front after which we went to eat a mereanda (the third meal, before dinner here) at an outdoor café. After this, which must have lasted about an hour, we walked back and the march was still going on! It was really moving. During the day they dropped 30,000 different poems from planes that mark the 30,000 desaparecidos. I picked up a few and took a bunch of photos.

Today marked the return to school—pretty uneventful. One thing that sticks out is how slack all the teachers are being—for me, it’s way different from the States—each professor was like “well I know that yall probably had long weekends, traveling and such, so I’m going to give you less work.” It’s just the opposite in the US, where a break often means more time to get work done. The mindset with regards to rest and free time is so distinct from our culture. My host mom takes a nap every afternoon but then we spend two hours at the dinner table. It seems as if there is never time to get work done but it’s as if the expectations aren’t as high just because we are all expected to take in our time with host families and Argentine friends—if we walk into class late because we were chatting with another professor, no worries. If we can’t get work done because we don’t understand it or don’t have time, the professor will give us an extension in class or postpone in without an email or office hour visit. When I go home on the bus at lunch time, it is packed with school children riding home to spend a couple of hours at home with their families, and my dad doesn’t leave for work until around 10 and comes back at 1 for lunch! I’m afraid I’m getting a little too used to this style of life—tonight I’m going out to a movie at 10 and who knows what afterwards. And it’s a Tuesday.

Only other news: I think I’m going trekking in Carlos Paz this weekend for a day. It’s 5 pesos to take the bus. I’ve decided that I need to travel as much as possible while I’m still here. In two weeks we head to Buenos Aires as a Clemson group. Hooray for dirty cities and pretty operas!

If anyone made it to the end of this post, I’m very proud, and I will give you a sticker when I return.