I am writing today from Mendoza City, the capital of the province where Argentinian wine comes from. Also home of Anacuanga (sp? but I don´t feel like looking it up), king of the mountains in the Americas at about 7,000 metres. Sounds like a big ass snake. I arrived Saturday by air from Buenos Aires (2 hrs instead of 12 - 14 on the bus), to have one last day to play before checking in with my host family for the next two weeks.
At this very moment, I´m on the way home from Spanish class, but it´s very hot outside and the internet cafe has a/c. Good excuse for a break.
About a week ago (within a couple of hours either way) I was landing in Buenos Aires, with very little knowledge of what was next. Not only did I survive the first week, I had a blast, met some neat people, explored, ate some amazing food, played the ´where will I be if I get off the subway here at this random location´game (purposely), got conned a little twice, and was detained briefly by the local constabulary.
Let´s start there with the creepiest experience I´ve had for awhile, because everything else has been pretty great.
On Thursday I was exploring the zoo (not good - we´ll come back to that) and surrounding area when I came across a building with the US flag, flying at half staff. Ahah, I thought! This must be the US embassy or something, and the flag is for Gerald Ford. Why don´t I capture this historic moment like I did a couple of days ago when I found the Canadian embassy? WITH A PICTURE!
I was pretty pleased with Pic 1, and was getting ready for Pic 2, different angle, better flag shot. That would be about the time that 2 guys very well dressed for the weather popped by for a chat. Friendly, like what is your name and where are you from and can we see your papers and stuff. One politely asked that I stay with him, while the other went to get a local cop. So now there are three guys on the sidewalk with me, asking the same questions, and not happy that I was not carrying my passport. (UM, duh, guys!) In any case, it was no biggie, but they asked me to show them the last few pics on the camera, asked that I delete the US embassy shots, and then show them again the memory to prove none were left. Which is all fine. My bad I guess, but it does beg the question - if I had a camera with film, would I have had to give them the film? I´m thinking yeah, which kinda creeps me out.
The Zoo. Hmmm. You can sort of tell when a public facility is under funded, but what do you say about a place where there are kiosks selling 'animal food' in bags to kids, who then go on to hand feed a variety of animals. Now last time I checked, different animals like different kinds of food, but whatever. I guess the real question is what kind of dope you have to feed to the animals for them to happily take nibbles from the hands of kids rather than just biting off the hands. Also, it doesn´t strike me as a good sign of emotional well being when there is a trail worn into the ground from where the animal paces or walks in circles all day.
OTHER than those little events, I´m having a great time. Food in restaurants is very good, and very inexpensive. It´s very hard to spend over $25 per person, including drinks, three courses, wine with dinner, and a decent tip. Service tends to be in the semi-formal European style with well dressed waiters, linen that gets changed after each guest, and polished wine glasses. One little surprise - I was hanging out with a guy from Israel in a sidewalk cafe, we both ordered cerveza grande, but neither of us appreciated the implications of 'grande'. I didn´t even know that beer came in 1 litre bottles, let alone at 2:00 in the afternoon. It was a very pleasant afternoon, with far longer spent in the cafe than intended. At under $2, who´s to complain that it´s more beer than expected?
Observations of Buenos Aires:
1) As above, really good service and value in food and booze. Excellent coffee and sweet croissants (medialunas)
2) Certifiable drivers. Other than the standard Latin American creation of new lanes where necessary, and other charming habits, why (and how) do people drive at night with no headlights?! I noticed this in Costa Rica as well, especially amongst the taxi drivers.
3) Speaking of which, taxis are very plentiful, always nearby, always flaggable, and very inexpensive. No idea how this business model works, as gas is about .70 per litre, so the drivers can´t make anything at all.
4) No idea what people are paid, but considering the jobs done by hand rather than using equipment (ie chucking concrete chunks from guy to guy to the dumpster) it can´t be much.
5) Interesting mix of extraordinary (apparently to the eye anyway) wealth and poverty. Describing some here as 'poor' really doesn´t capture it. With kids, it´s pretty disturbing - Dickensian, if that´s a word.
6) Would I come back? Yes, absolutely. Do anything different? Well, I´d like to not have wasted so much time getting mobile in Buenos Aires, but really, it was only two days before I discovered taxis, and three before I discovered the subway, so that might be a bit silly.
7) Personal safety - really, the spidey sense has never once gone off. The scariest thing was the US embassy thing, and that was over pretty quickly. I was conned pretty well a couple of times, but not for large amounts, and in both cases, I was so impressed by it that I figured a few pesos was well earned. In one case, the real doorman of the club I was going into was not impressed by the fact that I had already given another guy (apparently not the real doorman) 10 pesos. In another, I took a pic of a guy playing with his god in a public fountain. Very funny and charming pic. He objected, with a long sorry tale of how I was using him for entertainment and he had no shoes. I thought his argument was valid, apologized, and gave him 10 pesos. After a couple of days I realised he´s just another kind of buskers - lots of people hanging around fountains and monuments etc intending for you to take a pic of them being entertaining, and then confronting you when you do. It was no biggie - the kid was very friendly...just repeated himself a lot in Spanish until I got the idea that I needed to give him some money.
Next...impressions of Mendoza!
