Mendoza and Actually Horsing Around and I Have a Pretty Good Explanation for Why I Haven’t Been Keeping Up This Blog Lately But Just Relax for a Bit and I’ll Tell You
2013 September 10
Hey so… um… yeah it’s been a while. I can explain, but we’re going to have to start from the beginning. Don’t give me that look. It’s seriously a long story.
Okay so a couple hours ago, I think maybe 624-ish, give or take, I said that I was going to Mendoza.
Somewhere in this rant. By the way, I got that picture I said I would get of Alea and Sarah right before I left.
Wow, that was long ago. Anyway, didn’t get to see them leave but still got to say goodbye.
After packing more than I should have, we (Amy, Jessica, JJ, Morgan, and I) were on our way to Mendoza. We also met Amy’s friend from college, Kerry, at the bus station and he introduced me to my first Evita 100 peso bill.
Que lindo.
After a not-very but still somewhat excruciating night sleeping on a bus, I woke up to this magnificent view.
Which actually reminded me of Iowa and Nebraska, except, you know, scenic.
And before you knew it, we were in the Argentine province of Mendoza.
We didn’t do much on the first day, except find our hostel which was called the “Mendoza Monkey Hostel,” which was kind of a ripoff because it was NOT staffed by monkeys. But at least they had a dog.
Later that day we ate at this place.
Saw this thing
And I’m pretty sure this was the night we tried to go gambling. And if anyone’s worried about me getting addicted, don’t. First, we tried to get into an American hotel with a casino, and something about international law restrictions 21 years of age blah. After that, when we found another casino, it was like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel where, in the future, all gambling will be on identical screens that fill a medium-sized room by depressed-looking adults. We walked around for two minutes there and left. The third place wasn’t so bad, and all I really wanted to try was roulette (that’s the ball/spinny/numbers one right?) But a) the real roulette tables were tiny b) the buy-in was way too expensive and c) the less expensive version was on a screen, which is no fun because I can’t yell, “Red! Red! Red!… Dammit!..” at a real person when I inevitably lose. It just takes the humanity out of it. Well I tried 10 pesos at the slot machine that I didn’t understand and got about 8.75 back out of it. It really wasn’t worth cashing in an 8.75 peso redemption slip (keep in mind that’s about $1.09) so I kept it as a souvenir. So gambling has already caused too many problems in my life and I don’t want to have to deal with that again.
Instead of sewage inlets, Mendoza uses plain old slopes for water drainage. The useful thing about these is that they double as child-traps. If your child wanders off, no worries, just check your nearest unprotected gutter.
L5D Plaza L5D Independencia L5D L5D CH!E H25H0jkfdljskl was beautiful.
Unexpected group pic. From left to right: Kerry’s back, half of Amy’s back, 1/3 of JJ, Haley’s back, 1/10 of Jessica, Morgan’s backpack.
This is on our way to (yet another) bus. Luckily, we were only on this one for 2 hours or so. And our destination was here.
(Kerry’s left hand. I’m glad you guys are getting to see what my friends look like.)
But if you’d like a more picturesque view of our destination… I honestly don’t have that many photos (I’ll get to why later… the mystery unravels). But I’ll provide what I can. Here’s what we saw when we got there.
When we left from the bus stop, we met with 3 Danish students that were also studying abroad in Buenos Aires, went to Mendoza that weekend, stayed in the Monkey Hostel, and went mountain hiking at the same time. Unfortunately…
(No picture available)
But here are a couple more pictures that are considerably less Danish.
After all I think I’m only like 4% Danish or so. Everything else in this picture is either Argentine or made in China.
Let’s try that again
The lengths we go to for a group picture. I know I don’t post a lot of those on here, so if you really want to, you can find some on Facebook. If you’re a friend of mine, I’m sure you may have already seen some. If you’re a random creepy stranger, I’ve probably accepted you as a friend too. Whoops. Enjoy our faces.
The blue really brought out my eyes/obsession with my facial features.
And what nature hike is complete without one of these?
This music: http://home/spencer/dontcryformeusa.com/public.youtube.com/watch?v=AFa1-kciCb4
And looks like I actually do have a picture of one of the Danes, who might have been as into dogs as I am.
Pwetty wittow fwee fiwwed puppy wuppy. (We all used hand sanitizer later.)
We regressed to our bunks later that night and the next day the Día del niño (Day of the Kid) was upon us. We Americans did not know of this Argentine national holiday before we went to a local Mendoza park.
The production going on here actually brought flashbacks of when I was in The Elves and the Shoemaker in the summer of 2010. It was a pleasant surprise. My philosophy on children is that they’re okay, I guess. Sometimes I feel like I really like them, sometimes I feel like they should learn a couple social skills and come back with a more adult topic of conversation. But really, they’re all just future adults that recently came into the world and are learning to cope with their new surroundings. Adults are also all just past kids that time has passed over and now expects them to behave in ways against their natural child selves. I’m going to stop typing this before I fall asleep. We started a fútbol match with some future adults and barely tied them. I think it was a fair game since, although we were about 6 years older on average, they were Argentinians.
Later during El día del niño, we went to a less niño-packed place.
Which is where we found these.
And took them over here.
And over here.
And over here as well.
And dropped them off here.
My horse was a bit of an ass. Probably because it was related to so many (ouch!). It was a love/hate relationship. At first it didn’t respond well to what I needed from it, but later on it listened a little better and we became good friends. It was like a buddy-cop movie.
At the end of the horse trail, we all relaxed our hindquarters, drank some Mendoza wine (cheap in price, good in quality), and listened to this guy play some guitar.
I started recording, but my phone eventually said “memory full, you stupid tourist” and promptly deleted it. It was sad but not (yet) the end of the world, and part of the reason why so many pictures are missing (the mystery deepens!)
The next day, it was time to say goodbye to Mendoza and hello again to a long-distance bus ride. The hostel was a little happy to have us gone, as they (understandably) didn’t appreciate the decibel level of wine-drunk Americans from the night before. Luckily, no extra charges were made to our bill and everyone was feliz. So feliz that we saw a rainbow on our way to the bus stop.
Wow! A rainbow! Nothing could ruin this day!…(cue ominous sound effects)
Arriving at the bus station, our group of happy campers settled down outside to have lunch since we had about 1.5 hours before we needed to leave. It was relaxing. At some point someone mentioned a magazine that people were handing out in front of the Universidad de Belgrano earlier that week and I said, “Oh I actually have that right here, in my backpa-…” And, of course, there was a complete lack of backpack to the left of my seat. I’ve heard that the 5 stages of grief that one feels from the loss of a friend or family member can be applied in a miniature sense to objects as well, depending on how big the loss was, and I was definitely feeling some denial (the 1st stage of grief) in that moment since I was no longer the proud owner of the following:
One (1) Swiss Gear backpack
One (1) United States passport
Two (2) university textbooks
Two (2) class notebooks
One (1) iPad Mini
One (1) HP laptop
Three (3) charging accessories for laptop, iPad, and iPhone
One (1) copy of “A Confederacy of Dunces”
One (1) very personal thought journal
and One (1) scientific calculator
And that is the main reason why I haven’t updated my blog in 624 hours. I knew you’d understand.
After awhile, I accepted that my stuff was gone, changed all passwords ASAP on a slightly more excruciating bus ride home (through a series of phone calls to Rebecca, another housemate. Thank you so much Rebecca), and even found the location of the iPad using “Find My iPad” and remotely locked it. Most of the stuff is replaceable. Some things that I’ll never get back are the pictures on my iPad (why did I start using that on that exact weekend?), the data on the computer, and the thoughts I wrote down in the journal. But hey, what are all of these ideas of “ownership” about anyway? Let’s just say I’ve learned a valuable life lesson and blah blah blah. I think I may do a separate post on how I replaced/am still replacing all the stuff because that is a lot of information and storytelling just in itself. For now, enjoy this picture of the lunch I was having as my stuff got swiped, because as much of a letdown as that was, I don’t regret going to Mendoza and it was a great weekend nonetheless. If I could trade the lunch for my stuff back I still totally would.
Really though, if you know someone that can do a CSI-like digital enhancement of the reflections on the glass… or the cheese or something, we may still be able to catch this guy.