While Argentinians seem to trust four young, dirty strangers just fine, they apparently are quite wary of oneanother - hence in each town we receive stern warnings: "be careful in the next town. People steal things. Take care of your bicycles." without fail, the people in the next town are as accommodating and wonderful as the last. We will keep this a secret from other, less calculating travelers, precious.
Fire stations have become our default free lodging in smaller (and sometimes larger towns), which has afforded us a peek into the lives and minds of smalltown argentine firefighters. their ability to conversate with/humor us varies from town to town, though you can bet your spandex they'll offer you a bathroom, a shower, hot water and if you´re lucky, faturas (delicious doughnutty things covered in sugar. A jet pack for the morning bicyclist.)
That being said, we now reside in Mendoza with a 50-something gentleman named Ricardo. After meandering the neighborhood on our bicycles, past a delapidated hospital and bus station and after numerous blank stares to our questions for directions, we landed on OASIS ROBERTO, aka his amazing, small, perfect home, which is as much indoors as outdoors, as much potted plant as wall, so effortlessly color coordinated with pink courtyard walls and blue tiled accents that martha stewart would throw in the towel. This spanish literature professor just so happened to have a several course vegetarian meal prepared for us when we arrived, and introduced us to the lovely combination of boxed wine and mineral water.
That´s right folks, we are a snail trail away from Chile. There was much discussion (spanish, broken spanish, enclish, spangligh, etc) about taking on the andes, but international traffic, lack of shoulder and time constraints considered, we will be bussing over the andes. That is, if we can miss the CF that is argentine new years vacations, which supposedly pack busses to capacity.
The big city has afforded us long-awaited luxuries like plug adapters, bird and tree books and a post office (that's open).
Birds positively identified so far despite being on a moving bicycle and being thereby confined to the road:
Neotropic cormorant
bare-faced ibis
swallowtailed kite
chimango caracara
southern-crested caracara
southamerican stilt
quira cuckoo
fork-tailed flycatcher
vermillion flycatcher
monk parakeet
brown-hooded gull
southern lapwing
and an outrageous amount of raptors and small birds which will probably never be identified.
