Mendoza con Ryan

Alright, this entry is a bit longer so get comfortable:

Once I found out that I would not be starting classes until March 22, I pondered all of my options. While I felt slightly guilty for not staying to volunteer and help out in Santiago, a week and a half is a good amount of time for traveling down here- so I decided to spend a week in Mendoza. Some readers will know the lovely miss Ryan McCaffrey and remember that she is studying abroad for six months in that Argentine city. Of course, she was a big deciding factor because we were looking forward to meeting up in both Mendoza and Santiago (not to mention BA!). For everyone who is not familiar with that name, she is one of my best friends and we have known each other for about fifteen years (strange to be able to say that...we´re old). Anyway, the point is that I took a bus that left Santiago on Monday night at 10:00pm (22:00) and arrived in Mendoza sometime before 6:00am Tuesday. When I say bus, I think I need to explain that these are not just regular public transport buses. They are two stories, spacious, have large comfy reclining chairs, typically show a movie (for me, these have been either extremely stupid or intense tear jerkers), and serve you at least one meal, a drink, and a snack. These buses will take you all over South America at a reasonable price (the same kind I took to Iguazu from Buenos Aires).

I managed to check in to my hostel at that ridiculously early hour and take a nap before officially starting my first day in Mendoza. The week was relaxing and not necessarily eventful, but full of time well spent with Ryan and friends from her program. In addition, I stumbled upon the best alfajor I have tried so far. Alfajors are these popular Argentine cookies that consist of dulce de leche sandwiched between two crumbly cookie patties covered in some type of chocolate. Personally, I have decided the best alfajor is covered in white chocolate and contains a generous portion of dulce de leche. This dessert has been added to my list of sweets I plan to reproduce. My only major complaint about the trip is that my arms were thoroughly bitten by something during my first real night at my hostel. Nothing to worry about, just some extreme itchiness...I decided not to stay at that hostel again and Ryan´s family said it would be alright if I slept in her room the next night. They are such a sweet family.

From what I saw in my time there, I would compare Mendoza to San Luis Obispo, CA. It is a larger city complete with plazas, sidewalks full of shops and pedestrian traffic, but at the same time it has a small town feel. It definitely has a unique charm. The part of the city where Ryan´s host family lives is beautiful, with tree lined streets and picturesque homes. They also have a few streets full of bars and outdoor cafes, parks and adorable dogs everywhere. There is definitely a sizeable outdoor community, which makes sense considering its proximity to the mountains. Of course, Mendoza also produces something like 90 percent of all the wine produced in Argentina. I bought a bottle of Malbec wine one day (which is unique to Mendoza) and it was only around $3.00US!!

For my last full day in Mendoza, Friday, we planned to do a wine tour on bicycles! This sounded simultanously like a wonderful/possibly dangerous idea and we signed up enthusiastically. Due to non-serious yet unforeseen complications, Ryan failed to wake up on time and I ended up going alone. Luckily it was a group tour, so I ended up making friends (mostly with some friendly Australians and Israelis) and will hopefully be able to get pictures from some of them soon (since I was counting on Ryan having her camera..I should be getting mine this week). The bad news is that the weather in Mendoza quickly changed overnight so that it was quite the rainy day on Friday. We ended up continuing with the tour, many of us still riding our bikes, but I did end up with a good amount of mud on my shoes and my legs.. all over actually. The tour was slightly disappointing due to the small amount of wine we were given, but still fun considering we got to tour three different wineries, an olive oil factory, and visit a small chocolate shop that makes delicious liquors. For me, the most exciting part was that the last winery was organic and of course had the best wine. We tried a white wine there that was the sweetest wine I have ever tried-it tasted like flowers and honey and I plan on returning to buy a few bottles at some point.

I returned to Santiago last night to find a big package full of tjs peanut butter, trail mix, and other goodies sent by my loving grandparents (father please tell them THANK YOU!!) and also found out that my other camera arrived from CA but I will need to pick it up and sign for it (meaning I have to go all the way to the airport and pay a surprise fee for not being able to receive it on time! fun). Classes are supposed to start tomorrow, however the entire website for the university is not working and only some of my friends have been able to schedule classes-not me. We also still don´t actually have all the information for the classes- like hours, times, and days...So hopefully this can be resolved tomorrow or maybe by the end of the week. My computer is also still at the mac store because my hard drive and battery need to be replaced so I´m not sure when it will be ready. Anyway, things are kind of a mess at the moment but I´m sure most of it will be figured out this week and I´ll be happily trying to decode my professor´s lectures in no time.