Saturday, April 7, 2012

San Juan

Mendoza is an oasis in a desert. There should be a law against renting cars without air-conditioning! Argh. It was a hot, though fortunately short drive to San Juan, 170km north of Mendoza. It was a full car with Sara and the Danish couple from school, Peter and Pernille.

Every town in the country has 100m x100m blocks in a regular grid, more or less. It's amazing. The majority of streets are one way streets. It seems so orderly in theory. And yet! Each intersection has different rules regarding rights-of-way and getting around is tricky. Once I learned where I was going and the route I needed to take, by virtue of paper maps and excellent co-pilots (the GPS they rented us was a dud), it got easier navigating around town.

A bit later on in the afternoon we went for a drive to Ullum Dique - a dam in the hills. It was a stunning drive once we got out of town.

We found a spot to go for a hike and hiked up to see the sunset.

It was nice to MOVE. I've become quite the sloth on this holiday and I know my body is ready to get back to its normal routine as I've been craving going for runs again. Now THAT'S a sign!

A Good Friday

Touring around on bikes from vineyard to vineyard on a sunny day in the Maipú valley. What a fabulous way to spend Good Friday!

Sara and I met up with Jan (from the school) and caught one of the many versions of the #10 buses to Maipú this morning. It stopped near the bike rental places so we got off, along with 90% of the people on the bus! It's a popular spot! Once we got ourselves some wheels for 25$ and a map, we hit the road.

Plenty of Malbec grapes growing everywhere:

We made it to three vineyards over the course of five hours. We did tours at the first two, La Rural and the famous Trapiche. After that we only did a tasting at Viña El Cerno. In all we sampled seven different wines and by the end we had tasted quite a variety of both good and so-so wines. They all tasted great at the end!

The Trapiche visit was a highlight. It was also the most expensive visit at 35$ for a tour and 3 wines. That is still relatively cheap - especially compared to the vineyard in Chile! It was worth it though as the wines were 'muy deliciso' and the vineyard was beautiful.

In the planning stages of my trip, I knew I wanted to tour the vineyards of Mendoza. As always, it's different than you imagine but in this case, it surpassed my expectations. ¡Que bueno!

Happy full moon and happy good Friday!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

A lifetime of learning!

Here I am on vacation and I'm celebrating the end of the week. When on a proper holiday I shouldn't even know what day of the week it is. But this week was different.

I completed the first half of level 2 spanish. Yay! I am really pleased to have the opportunity to learn while traveling. I know that this is something I am always going to want to do at various times again in the future. It's one of the cool parts of life and living it well, in my mind anyway. However...¡Cada uno tiene su gustos!

It has been a worthwhile week as I feel I have made a lot of progress and my level for conversations has improved from those of a three year old to a five year old. Being able to speak in the past tense makes a big difference.

Sara and me the appropriate section of the bookstore!


Our plans to go on a vineyard tour today were thwarted by the holiday today. It's sure a funny time to see any city in a predominantly catholic country. Semana Santa is a big holiday for 'cat-lickers'. In any case we should be able to try again tomorrow.

After an 'hora de la leche' with Sara (I sure lucked out to get a cool buddy to hang out with this week) we wandered through town. We really haven't seen much of Mendoza. So far it looks like a classroom to us and that's it!

Plaza Indepencia was in full swing with people hanging out, shopping at the artesan markets, busking, painting, skateboarding etc.

It's a beautiful and well thought-out park.

Afterwards we continued on to a chocolate factory on Las Heras before finding a really cool market where we bought some pretty jewellery.

The walk back was a exhausting as we got a bit lost. Details for Godoy Cruz don't show up on maps of Mendoza and street names are repeated between the two adjacent towns. Argh. We were EXHAUSTED when we got back but were welcomed back by Beatriz and Luis. Casa sweet casa!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The night the lights went out in...Mendoza

I met Zach and Rob for lunch today between classes. It was good to catch up a bit on the last few days and reminisce a bit on our trip as we showed Rob some of the 'poodled' pictures (=photos edited with Snapseed which Zach called SnapPoodle or just poodle for short!)

I then had another two hours of classes which are put on to make up for the Good Friday 'feriado'. We're all finding these extra two hours a day rather useless as our brains are already full after the first four hours of class.

At least I had 'Decimo' to look forward to. A group of us met after school at the funky bar on a rooftop patio to watch the sunset. It was a really nice group of people which included Sara, Julia, Henriette, Peter, and Pernille. At one point I sat back and observed the group and thought to myself "Before I left everyone asked if I wasn't worried about traveling on my own. They thought I'd be lonely. Yet here I am with a lovely group of new friends. It is all good. I'm lucky."

Then the lights to the entire city went off! They were off for about 45 minutes too! It was a fascinating experience to witness a dark city. It's so obvious something's missing!

Only one building's lights are on...


Of course the worst part was that our blender drinks, our delicious strawberry daiquiris, were delayed during this time!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Humitas!

Dreamt in Spanish...well, not exactly Spanish but Spanish gibberish for sure!

Six hours of classes today. Rafael showed up. Good to have a buddy but I got frustrated just before lunch. We were repeating the same things I'd done in BA. Flipping ahead in the book I didn't see much of the past tense. What gives? Well, I got what I asked for after lunch in another private lesson. I got drilled on the preterito indefinido big time...and it was exactly what I needed.

After class I met Sara plus two German sisters, Julia and Henriette, for the cooking class. We made humitas with Demian. Humita is a typical northern argentine dish made with corn, pumpkin, onion, pepper and a few spices.

It was so simple and so good. I'd been tempted during the day to bail on the class but I'm sure glad I went.

The best part was eating our creation in the garden with a little vino. Brilliant.


Sara and I wandered home afterwards and went to find a spot with wifi (a bit of a problem these days and my addiction is uncomfortably apparent!). We came home, had dinner and chatted with Beatriz and Luis before starting on to our homework which kept us up until nearly midnight. Hey...hang on a second...aren't I on vacation?

Monday, April 2, 2012

Homework!

I have homework! Oh man! I sure don't miss that about school but I suppose it will force me to learn faster. So will having 4 hours of class today as the only student. One other guy was supposed to join but didn't show up. Private lessons are great for clarifying questions and really getting the most out of the class...but it also means no sleeping or downtime. Maybe this Rafael character will show up tomorrow?

In any case, this second week of classes is off to a great start. I finally covered the past tense...or rather one of four past tenses and only with regular verbs. My new family is wonderful. Beatriz and Luis are lovely and it's so obvious that they really enjoy having people in their home. They are eager to chat with Sara, my 'Mendoza sister', and me in Spanish and a bit of English. This is the way to really learn the language and about the people. I highly recommend it to anyone!

Here's a shot Sara took of Beatriz helping me with my homework:

After class today Sara and I went on a walking tour of the city with a Danish couple. This city has an interesting history with its proximity to the Andes, earthquakes, harsh climate and the classic tale of the indigenous vs. the conquistadors.

We were both exhausted by the time we got home. Our brains were full of Spanish words and then it was time to do homework. I wonder which day this week will mark the beginning of dreams in spanish-gibberish!

PS. Happy birthday to my baby sister, Susan!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Crossing the Andes

It was my own fault. I was just killing time in the morning before my 13:40 bus to Mendoza.

I started the day by having brunch with Zach and his cousin Rob who'd just flown in from the States and who would be the next 'victim'/co-pilot. After I said goodbye I figured I should see a bit of Santiago before leaving. I went for a walk along the river and stumbled upon the Santiago Marathon.

I walked along and watched for a while. I was right near the 37km mark and while some runners made it look easy, others looked like they were in so much pain. It was a good day for the event, around 25'C, and there were lots of participants and supporters cheering on the sidelines. There were even more drivers honking in frustration at the main street being closed off and having to find alternative routes.

It still didn't register with me.

When I got back to the hotel at 13h I caught a taxi to the bus station ~7.5km away. Plenty of time, right? It was the taxi driver's face when I told him that my bus was in forty minutes that put the pieces together for me. Uh oh! I had to go through that traffic too!

He got me there with quite the crazy drive though the streets. I ran to dock 22 at 13:50 and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that they were still loading cargo. Thank you Mr. Taxi Driver and thank you Universe!

And this was a drive I didn't want to miss.

Look at some of these views I saw from the bus window:

It was a beautifully clear day and I had a spectacular view of the Andes and Aconcagua - South America's highest peak.




Andean sunset:

The trip was supposed to take 7 hours but in fact it took 8 hours. I'm sure a big part of that was the hour at customs and immigration. Traffic into the city was pretty crazy too. I was baggage when I finally arrived at my home stay house and it wasn't long before it was lights out. It was a school night after all!