Weekend in Mendoza

So…I spent this last weekend in Mendoza, Argentina. I originally wanted to take off on Thursday night and go to Buenos Aires, skipping the entire next week of school and getting a feel for Argentina, but my ecology professor wouldn’t let me reschedule a quiz so I had to be in Santiago all day today, Monday. Bummer. Luckily Mendoza is just barely over the border, only about a 6 (ish) hour bus ride, tickets are cheap getting there and back, I’d wanted to go check it out for a long time and Argentina is dirt cheap. I happened to mention to a fellow American classmate, Katie, (she studies at UC Davis) that I was thinking of going but wanted a travel companion, and she was very excited about the idea of going with me. All right, it all seemed to be working out!

We initially thought that we would leave on Friday morning, early, because everyone says that the trip over the mountains is well worth being awake for. However, we ended up finding a bus that left at 10:30 Thursday night, which would put us in Mendoza around 5 the next morning and give us the full day to explore. Of course when we got to Mendoza that morning we didn’t have a hostel arranged and we were completely exhausted, but it ended up working out all right. We found a really beautiful, posh hostel that’s way nicer than anything I’ve stayed in so far (pool, bar and restaurant, tons of people our age, free amazing continental breakfast…) that only cost $8 a night. Oh, Argentina, you amaze me! We crashed for a little nap that morning, and then got up and started planning out weekend’s adventures.

Let me just say, to start with on something positive, that there were redeeming features of traveling with Katie. Well, one, anyways. Because they make and drink a lot of wine in this general part of South America, I’ve recently decided that I need to become much more educated on the subject. KellyAnne, our friend Rosie and I decided to start a little self-education project, where each week one of us would research a wine, buy a bottle of it and share it with the others while teaching them about it. A fun way to get started, anyhow. We had a day of monsoon rains last weekend, and instead of doing real studying I spent some time online learning (and forgetting) a million different things about wines and wine tasting. It was pretty fun, and it got me excited to go wine tasting and learn some stuff. Luckily, Katie lives around Napa Valley and has taken 3 college courses on wine and wine tasting. Additionally, the valleys around Mendoza produce 70% of Argentina’s wine, so it’s a good place to start. The local wines are dirt cheap and very good, so Katie and I made a point to buy wine with all of our meals and then she would dissect it for me as we ate. It was very fun, and the last day we were there we went on a wine tour (for only $10!!! A chauffer picked us up at our hostel and drove us around the valley to different wineries where we got complete tours and tasting and everything! Katie’s mom came to visit her last month here in Chile, and they did the same sort of thing but only got to visit 1 winery, and it cost them $50 each!).

However, I’m afraid to say that the rest of the experience traveling with her was a bit of a disaster. KellyAnne and I do a very good job of being reasonable about spending money when we’re traveling together; that was clearly not a focus of Katie’s. I don’t know where all of her money comes from (I kind of get the impression that beyond the ATM, she doesn’t, either) but she spent spent spent spent spent! Sure, Argentina is way cheaper than Chile, but only if you don’t go to all of the fancy boutiques and buy ridiculous amounts of super stylish clothes. It doesn’t really count as saving money if you still $40 on a shirt that you wouldn’t have bought if it wasn’t in Argentina, but whatever. Not only that, but she was incredibly rude to people—for example on the bus ride over to Mendoza the two of us were talking, probably a bit loudly, and it was around 11:30 or 12 at night. One of the people sitting behind us asked us to please speak a little softer, and instead of the reasonable response of “Oh, I’m so sorry! Of course we will!” Katie snidely remarked in her very poor Spanish with a terrible gringo accent “Fine. All you have to do is ask, geeze!” She even threw in one of those “Cccchhhhaaa” disgusted exhaling sounds people make between their teeth and their lips. I was mortified. That’s a pretty solid example of what her behavior was like for the rest of the trip, and I’m not even going to get started with the incredibly embarrassing way that she threw herself at every pretty boy that we saw, making very obvious and over-the-top comments about whichever part of their body she happened to find particularly attractive. Needless to say, I don’t have any plans to travel with her again.

Luckily, at the very least her craziness drew attention to my sanity, so I suppose in the end it probably only helped me meet people and make friends.

Anyhow, with all of that said, the first day she spent shopping (I just kind of followed along) and enjoying the cheap, incredible steaks and wines. The next day we got up early and went on an all-day river rafting excursion, which was AWESOME! The rapids were all class 3’s or 4’s, which I guess is on the medium-large-ish size scale, but it wasn’t ever wild or crazy or scary so it gave me desire to try something bigger. Our boat was quite an international mix—besides Katie and I there were three French boys (one of them half French half English), our guide who was a guy just a little older than us from Mendoza, and another guide who was on his first day on the river here in Mendoza, just arrived from Italy where he guides all summer up there. He actually was really interesting – he spends the northern hemisphere summers in Italy, where he’s from, guiding, and the southern hemisphere summers traveling to various rivers around the world river raft guiding there. Last summer, he was in Uganda! Anyhow, we had a lot of fun, and got back to the hostel around 6 exhausted. Of course, that didn’t stop us – there was a huge artesian fair in the plaza two blocks from our hostel, so we walked down there and spent several hours looking at and buying all of the cool stuff. Artesian fairs like that are so amazing here in South America –it’s like Saturday Market in Portland, with all of the neat, funky, unique handicrafts, but it’s all dirt cheap here.

Probably the craziest part of the whole trip was a strange strange encounter that happened while we were at the artisan fair. I happened to just be wandering through the booths when who did I happened to run into but Robert, the fellow American we met on Easter Island!!! It was so hilarious to see him again, especially there in Argentina!!!

After the fair, Katie and I went out to dinner (I had a thick, tasty stake cooked in Roquefort sauce and side dish and a drink all for about $7. I think I might move to Argentina.) We returned to the hostel for a bit, then our river rafting guide from that day came to meet us and we went out for drinks. We hung out for a while, and eventually Katie decided she wanted to go to a discothèque, so she headed out with some other people that we met and I made my way back to the hostel (it was like 3 in the morning at that point and our wine tour started at 8:30 the next morning.) She ended up staying out all night, getting back right as I was packing my things to leave, and slept through a solid portion of the winery tour that day.

While on the tour, we met two lady doctors from Cordoba who studied in Buenos Aires; they were in Mendoza for an international conference on diabetes. They were incredibly friendly and nice, and asked for our email addresses to stay in contact with us. I told them about some of the various directions I’m considering taking my life after I finish at Carroll, and they were very enthusiastic about helping me find connections of any type in Argentina. I’m sure that as you’re reading this, Dad, you’re either panicking or fuming, but I feel pretty confident that my future holds some sort of project in Argentina. Senior research project to write an honors thesis with next summer, perhaps? Or working in a public health clinic for a year before going on to a professional program, maybe? Only time will tell….aren’t you excited for me that I’m so interested in broadening my horizons and exploring the world?  (I already know the answer to the final question is “No.”) What’s more, I could get any sort of job for a tourist agency while I’m there, since I speak Spanish and English—maybe even at a winery!

Another exciting part of the wineries tour is the fact that we went to a small, familiar-style winery (“Cavas de Don Arturo”) that only sells bottles directly in their bodega and on the international export market. I bought a bottle of Malbec and another of Cabernet Sauvignon for 9 dollars total. Why is that special, you ask? Well, my friend, each of those bottles is in the $90 + range in the US!! Ohh yeah.

And that’s pretty much that…Katie wanted to stay and shop one more day but I had class this morning, so I went to the bus station to head home. Getting tickets to Mendoza is a breeze, so I wasn’t too worried about getting back to Santiago, but unfortunately all of the trips until 10:30 that night were booked up. Crap. Once again the fact that I speak Spanish was crucial in being able to get everything worked out (and I hate to say it, but unfortunately in these machismo countries the fact that I was wearing a skirt might have had something to do with it, as well); I explained to a bus driver my situation and they ended up finding me a seat, even though it was the middle front bench seat in a mini-bus/van type thing, so I made it back to Santiago last night.

You may remember from earlier in this post that I had wanted to skip a week of classes and go to Buenos Aires for several days, but had to come back for a bio quiz. Well, have no fear, dear reader, because I wasn’t about to give up on that idea. I’m back in Santiago right now, yes, but at 8:30 tomorrow morning I’ve got a flight to Buenos, where I’ll be until Sunday. Don’t worry; I didn’t pay too much for my plane tickets, in case you were wondering. GOL Airlines, a Brazilian company, has incredibly cheap tickets that I just had to take advantage of. Why would any particular Brazilian airline have insanely cheap tickets right now? Just take my advice and don’t think about it too much-you’re probably happier without the answer.