First, I'll start by telling you all that I now think in Spanglish. It's confusing but kind of awesome.
Last weekend began Semana Santa, basically Easter Week, which meant no class Thursday or Friday. So, about half my program decided to venture to the wine region of Mendoza to booze, bike, raft, hike and do other outdoorsy shit.
Now about Mendoza..sadly too damn much occurred for a play-by-play account so here's the highlight reel, so to speak.
Left BA Wednesday night on an omnibus (a big-ass double-deck tour-lookin thing). We drove out of a storm and could see lightning zinging the city over and over from a distance. Apparently the storm was so bad that in the province(not city) of BA, 13 people died.(almost typed se murieron)
About two hours before we pulled into Mendoza, the bus stopped at a restaurant and everyone got a cup of coffee and some medialunas (which are like sweet, glazed croissants). Cool with me. However, the woman sitting outside the women's bathroom with her damn box of rationed portions of toilet paper FOR SALE was not cool. I can't fully explain why but as a woman, something in my core firmly believes that if toilet paper is available in the vicinity of a bathroom, it should be FREE. Of course there wasn't any toilet paper in the actual bathroom, OG perched outside the door had apparently cornered the TP market.
Taking a stand in support of the right to have freely available toilet paper, I held it til Mendoza.
Finally we got to Mendoza, got a cab to our hostel and checked in. We stayed at La Puerta hostel and having been in my fair share of hostels, La Puerta was trailing the pack. However, to my knowledge, no bugs or diseases were acquired during our stay and the breakfast pastries were bangin so all's well that ends well.
Chelsea and I had beds in a large, communal room, shared by four other women in their late twenties. One woman looked like a well-done drag queen and by the end of the weekend, I'd seen way more ass-crack than I cared for.
That night we waited too late to order food and since all the markets were closed for semana santa we feasted on crackers and alfajores for dinner. Movie of the night was the Miley Cyrus Disney movie, which I can say with minimal shame I quite enjoyed. Followed tragically, by a Spanish-dubbed version of Passion of the Christ. Everyone in the hostel gathered around the two TVs and watched it with a transfixed intensity. In the US, we watch Charlie Brown's Easter or the 10 Commandments, in Argentina-they keep it real, crucifix,Jesus and all.
Next day, we tried and failed to get our shizz together for hiking. Plan B? Wander the city with Natalia, our new found Colombian friend. Natalia was in her mid-30s to early 40s (never asked) and was in the middle of a sabbatical year after living in Madrid for 12 years. We spoke entirely in Spanish and I realized how normal the juh-ing of Argentinian Spanish had become to me. For dinner we walked a few blocks to get burgers and pizza with our other new friend, Danny Donnelly, an Australian passing through on his way to Chile. When marking his leftovers, I told him to be real obvious about it-I'd left a half liter of 7 Up in the fridge the night before but came back to find it almost gone. So he wrote in big letters "Chubby Aussie's breakfast."
The night's viewing selection: Shrek.
That night, the crone quartet came back to the hostel at 6am. They were some loud drunk mufuggas, not even bothering to keep the volume down to a drunken stage-whisper level but preferring to just be upfront with their conversation. I pulled out my earplugs and discovered to my horror, that one of them had disappeared.
Our final day in Mendoza we had signed up for Mr. Hugo's wine tour on a friend's recommendation. We get to Mr. Hugo's, expecting an all-inclusive guided bike tour and wine. We got..a cheery grandpa man handing us numerous styrofoam cups of red wine and no tour guide. Helmets obviously optional. First place we went to was a beer garden-the beer was amazing and I'd bet very good money that our waitress was packing a pair of huevos beneath that mascara and 5 o'clock shadow. We ended at a winery that gave us samples of olive oil, jams and chocolate as well as a complimentary shot of liquor or absinth. It worked.
25 kms, 5 hours and even more styrofoam cups of wine later, Chelsea and I took a taxi back to the hostel. We looked at each other with our wine-stained teeth and sun-baked faces and broke out laughing at what had happened that day. Per usual in Argentina, what we got was a version of what we expected. Nothing went according to plan but it all went alright.
Back on the bus to BA and the in-bus movie was.. Tree of Life with Brad Pitt. Freaking weird-ass movie. I eventually had to close my eyes in order to stop feeling like I had unwittingly entered into someone else's acid trip. By the time we got off the bus in BA, I was glad to be "home". Went back to my apartment and collapsed.
Next adventure, Patagonia.
Sike, every day is an adventure here
-j
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