Weeks 21 – “Mendoza, Argentina”

Mendoza, Argentina is a medium size city just over the mountains near the Chilean-Argentinean border.  Heather and I went on a 5 day 4 night vacation there, because we wanted to see another country in South America and we didnīt need a plane or a visa to get there.  My favorite part of the trip was the bus ride there.  Just before the trip I had been thinking that I wanted to see more of the mountains, because I have been to the ocean at least 5 times now and although I love the ocean I also love the mountains and had only gone hiking in the mountains near Santiago once.  So this bus ride was just what I wanted, we spent at least 4 hours driving through the mountains.  The Santiago side was rainy so we didnīt see much, but the Argentinean side was gorgeous and I have lots of pictures so I wonīt waste time trying to describe it.  We arrived in Mendoza with no problems, but after this our trip really balanced between OK and good, never really reaching the levels of our trips that we took in Chile. 

Our first problem was that our tourist company put us up in a hotel outside of the center of the city.  We spent plenty of money on taxis our first night and insisted that our hotel be changed for one with a more central location the next day.  Our next problem was my own fault.  Before arriving to Chile I read several tour books about the country so that I would have some knowledge about the money, the culture, and the countries history.  However, since we decided to go to Argentina last minute I didnīt read anything to prepare us for being in a different country.  Therefore when we needed to take out money, I thought that I could figure out their currency with the application of a little life experience.  In the US and in Chile time machines donīt give out bills larger than $20 and the first few automatic options are usually not very large sums of money.  Since we didnīt know the currency exchange rate I decided to just take out the 3rd preset amount in the time machine (which was 300 pesos) assuming that it would be about $100. Unfortunately, we learned soon after that I had actually taken out $300 because the dollar is pretty much equal to the peso in Argentina.  So not only was I not thrilled to be walking around with $300 the machine gave it to me in 3 hundred dollar bills.  I thought that with no banks open that we wouldnīt be able to buy anything, because in the US as well as Chile it is difficult to find a business that can change anything bigger than a twenty dollar bill.  To our surprise the first place that we went into was able to change a hundred dollar bill for each of us without even blinking.   So if you ever heard that Argentina is very expensive and that the people are big spenders I can tell you after being there that it is not a rumor.  Unfortunately, I had no trouble spending all 300 pesos even though we didnīt do anything particularly special and tried to eat only once a day.  But I have to admit that the $300 did included a splurge on a pair of leather boots.  High heel boots are very popular with the woman there, so after seeing women walking around in high heel leather boots for 3 days, I had to give in and buy myself a pair too (a $45 ŋŋpractical?? souvenir.)

Unfortunately, the popular dance clubs were outside the city and too far for us to get to without a car so we had to settle for the less exciting clubs downtown.  The first night we asked a group of women for a recommendation of where to go and took a taxi there.  When we arrived we learned it was entrance by invitation only and that there was no other dance clubs near by.  Fortunately, when the bouncer learned that we were from Chicago he took pity on us and let us in.  For the first hour I was very happy, because we felt special for being in an invitation only club, and because they had a very good live Argentinean band playing.  But to my disappointment, when the club switched over to the DJ an hour later they played almost all music from the US including songs from MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.  Also to my disappointment, (although considering the music they were playing I didnīt care too much) Heather and I danced alone all night long.  It was a somewhat weird environment in general because there was several large and small groups of women dancing together and none of the men on the outside of the dance floor asked any of them to dance.  (Our Argentinean friends explained to us later that the men donīt ask groups of women dancing together to dance because culturally if Argentinean women are dancing in a group they are out to be with their girl friends and wonīt except.)  We decided to go home early after a couple of hours.  The next day when trying to gather more recommendations for good places to go dancing we met Geraldo, who to my surprise rather than just giving us a name of a place to go invited us to go out with him and his cousin (Eduardo.)  So we got together with them for a drink at a small local bar, went dancing later on, and got together several times during the rest of our days in Mendoza.  The bus ride through the mountains and our conversations with our new Argentinean friends were definitely the highlights of our trip.  We got together for pizza and ice-cream with Eduardo the next night and the night after he invited us over to his house to have coffee and meet his sister (Cecilia) and we ended up going to play pool... I think that the guys might have been getting a little annoyed that Cecilia and I were talking more than we were playing pool... They were all very friendly and good intelligent company.  I think that by the last day we had talked about just about every subject imaginable.  Eduardo sent us an email even before we left, so I think that we will be staying in contact with him at least, if not all three.

Wrapping up...we also took a tour of the city, two winery tours, and a chocolate factory tour.  Honestly none of them were very exciting, so I am not going to say more than that we did them and that I was excited to be in a chocolate factory, but disappointed that it wasnīt anything like in the movie Willy Wonka`s Choclate Factory.  We ate good food and drank good wine.  We talked way too much English.  (I hardly spoke Spanish for 5 days, because even when I addressed people in Spanish they still insisted in speaking to me in English, I was disappointed to find that a smaller city in Argentina has just as much or more influence from the US as Santiago itself.)  My last observation, but definitely not the least was that I was surprised by the beauty of the average Argentinean woman but at the same time very saddened by how thin they were.  I asked our Argentinean friend, Cecilia, if the women were natural thin but she told me that in Argentina right now there is a lot of competition between woman for who is the prettiest and thinnest and that in general they are thin because they donīt eat.  I think that being women we feel a basic need to be perceived as beautiful, and sometimes it is hard to decide how far we should go to reach that perceived image:  exercise, eat healthy, wear makeup, buy expensive clothes, get breast implants, get plastic surgery, not eat??????....  Myself, I wonīt go any further than exercising, eating heathy, (note to self:  need  to exercise more and eat healthier) and wearing a little bit of makeup sometimes....and when I am rich maybe buy expensive clothes....
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