Change of Plans

This week's weather: high 60s and sunny, low 40s at night. Toto, we're not in San Diego anymore.
Recent reading: Deuteronomy

Greetings from Santiago, Chile! If you read my last post (just say you did), then you're probably wondering what I am doing in Santiago. Funny story. Well, not funny as in "haha" funny but more of a "classic Hilarie" type story, as some would say.

I was en route to the farm in San Rafael within the Mendoza province of Argentina. With vague directions and unreliable buses, just getting to the farm was an adventure. And when I say "adventure," I actually mean "dark omen." There were a couple of times along the way--namely when the bus driver dropped me off at a different location than I was told so I had no idea how to proceed "700 meters in a westerly direction"--when I considered just turning back but decided that I had invested too much to quit just yet. When I arrived at the finca, the other volunteers were already in their dorm on the opposite end of the farm so I had to wait at the gate for the owner to arrive. The owner stated that the shared dorm for volunteers was full and I was to stay in the spare room within the main house. I was already feeling isolated.

The owner was a middle aged man, twice divorced, looked 70 but was actually 55. His mother was English and his father was Danish but he was born and raised in Argentina. He spoke perfect British English which actually made him even more creepy since I couldn't pin my uneasy feeling on a language barrier. (Besides the fact that this was no way for me to improve my Spanish.) Already I had an uneasy feeling but since it was already nighttime, I figured I'd stay until morning.

The next day I met 2 of the other 6 volunteers but only for the time it took them to instruct me to dig a hole for irrigation. Have you read the book or the seen the movie "Holes?" Because I have and digging holes is actually considered a punishment for juvenile delinquents. But truth be told, I actually enjoyed the physical labor and being outside since the only real exercise I've done is walking (albeit a good amount). Still, the hole digging was a solitary activity.

Did I mention there was no water? He hypothesized that a main water line was broken due to a local construction project. There was no water for showers or drinking or cooking. Lunchtime came and again it was just me and the owner. After lunch he said he was going into to town to run an errand. Be more vague. I decided to lay down for a siesta. But there was not sleeping. I starred at the ceiling, my eyes wide open, clenching the pepper spray in my pocket. Internally I was debating if the uneasy feeling I was having was just my own personal brand of awkwardness creeping in or if there was something real to it. I decided I wasn't going to stay to find out. I jumped out of bed and threw my things in my suitcase. I wrote the owner a note--I don't want to be rude, afterall--and left it in the crack of the front door.

But I wasn't out of the water yet. It was half a mile to the next road where I could catch a bus into town. Here I was, a giant, gringo tourist wheeling my pack down the dirt road trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, so not at all. And then I see a car approaching. Please don't let it be the owner, please, I thought. The car was getting closer. And closer. Sure enough, it's him. He pulls over and we have about a 5 minute conversation where I simply explain that this was not what I was expecting and I apologize for any inconvenience but I'm headed back to Mendoza. Eventually he heads off and I head towards the main road where I hopped a bus to San Rafael's downtown. I found a hostel for Thursday night where I hit the hay early.

Friday at breakfast I met a girl from Buenos Aires who said she was going on a tour at 2pm. With absolutely no plans at this point, I decided to go along. Gabi and I became fast friends hanging out together for most of the tour and chatting constantly in Spanish. The highlights of the tour include visiting a local winery:

American Oak

One should be enough

Okay, maybe just one of these barrels instead.

And hiking around a couple of lakes:

Pondering life's most profound truths...

Selfie, don't judge.

Very peaceful lake

On Friday night Gabi and I went out with a group of guys we went on the tour that are from Santa Cruz, Argentina. We met at a bar where there was live music and then proceeded to a boliche (club) for dancing and adult beverages. The more I spoke Spanish the more confident I felt about it. In fact, several times I made jokes in Spanish that the group found to be very funny actually. Got back to the hostel about 5 AM, so a pretty typical Argentinian night out.

Saturday, due to fernet (spirit) and only a few hours of sleep was rough since check-out was at 10 AM. I explored the quaint town of San Rafael a little more with it's cute clothing stores and little coffee shops. As a reference, it reminds me a little of both Door Country and Temecula.

Just thought it was a cute train near the bus station

Plaza San Martin

With my previous game plan out the window, I decided to go to Santiago, Chile. So I took a bus back to Mendoza Capital (about 3 hours). With just a few hours until my next bus to Santiago, I slept in the bus station. I use the term "slept" very loosely. Since it was freezing, I layered pretty much all of the clothes from my suitcase and I think I have a semi-permanent kink in my spine from attempting to sleep across my entire backpack for security, of course.

I don't know why the bus toilet is foaming...

Epic mountain trek

Beautiful ride along across the Andes

Around 7:30 AM my bus left Mendoza for Chile. Customs on the bus went very smoothly. That package that one guy asked me to carry seemed fine! I arrived in Santiago de Chile around 2:00pm on Easter Sunday just in time to clean up and attend 8:00 PM mass.

I put the ME in MENDOZA

This week's weather: Saturday, Sunday highs in the low 60s during the say and chilly 40s at night; Monday-Wednesday low to mid 70s.
This week's read: Numbers.

On Friday I left Cordoba on a bus to Mendoza. What was supposed to be a 9 hours bus ride somehow took 14. Fortunately, I again slept most of the way, waking up once to find that:
1) A middle aged Argentinian man had plopped down next to me and
2) I had been snoozing on his shoulder for who knows how long.
I promptly apologized and then scooted over to my window nook to catch a bit of the landscape flying by. Part of the trek involved ascending and descending a mountain with some breathtaking and steep cliffs along the way. Needless to say, there were no shoulders (except for the Argentinian one I was sleeping on) or guard rails here.

I arrived in Mendoza around 11pm where I checked in to my hostel and quickly jutted across the street to fill my growling tummy. I ordered a calzone the size of my head and ate most of it. No regrets from this girl.

The next couple of days I spent a fair amount of time walking around town seeing even more plazas, fountains and the like, all with the same names as any other plaza in any other Argentinian town.

Some plaza

And another plaza...

Plaza Espana was a highlight with some amazing story-telling tile work on the ground, seating, and monument.

  

I celebrated Palm Sunday with an evening mass at a local iglesia that I ran across the first day I arrived. I was unexpectedly splashed with gobs of holy water by a priest with a palm branch. This was after I accidentally sat down in the confessional line.

On Tuesday I survived a biking and wine tour! The province of Mendoza is known for its wines, specifically their Malbecs but I need further research to draw my own conclusions. Meanwhile, I've previously had some bad experiences with bikes but since my bike city tour in Buenos Aires went so well, I thought I'd give this one try.

First we visited Cecchin Winery, a small organic farm started and still run by an Italian family that immigranted from Northern Italy.

Ready to ship!

Hanging out with the grapes

Next, we went to Vistandes, an industrial winery, gaining world-wide recognition. http://www.vistandes.com/home.htm

Not a bad view of the Andes.

I blurred out the photo to protect the anonymity of all my friends.

Temperature controlled windows

Wine is serious stuff. And so are selfies.

We visited one more boutique winery but I don't remember its name. And it's not because it was the third wine tasting.

Lastly, we spent some time at a beer garden. I was surprisingly content with my craft beer!

Overall, I've loved Mendoza! It's a city with everything one could ask for from hiking mountains to rafting rivers to wine tasting to shopping at quaint boutiques. I longed to go paragliding here in Mendoza but decided against it for now due to the cost and am pretty bummed about it. Hopefully I'll get to do it in another country along the way for less.

A little graffitiart

Low point: I ate at McDonalds. Before you judge, you don't know how badly I had to use the restroom before I saw those golden arches. I used the bathroom there and then a white chocolate toblerone with dulce de leche McFlurry for 15 pesos was calling my name! Call it a moment of weakness but that McFlurry was darn good.

Wednesday I head out, about 4 hours southeast to San Rafael where I need to take some local buses to get to the farm I'll working on. It's a literal wild goose chase with directions (in Spanish) like  "ask the driver for four corners" and then "turn right at the president's hair" and "head in a westerly direction for 700 meters." We'll see how well this works out. 

Last Supper

This week's weather: upper 60s, intermittent rain, Fall is coming.
This week's read: Leviticus.

Today was my last day in Cordoba. I can't believe I've been here over a month already! It feels like I've just arrived... Or that I've been here for forever.

A taste of what it's like sleeping on bunk beds, sharing a room with 3 dudes. Fortunately for you, I don't have a way to share the unique odor that welcomes you. 

And after reading Leviticus:
"Everything the [unclean] man sits on when riding will be unclean, and whoever touches any of the things that were under him will be unclean till evening; whoever picks up those things must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening."

Makes me wonder what I've sat on in chairs in restaurants, pews in church, benches in the park.
I had the sudden urge to get my clothes professionally cleaned. I have been washing them in the sink with traveler's laundry detergent as needed (it works; don't judge). And washing them in the bidet like one mystery hostel guest didn't seem like a better option. I ventured out looking for a same-day laundromat.

Fitting enough, much of the city including some restaurants and businesses were shut down today due to the train/bus strike. (Am I in France or what?) Add in a little rain in the late morning and it made for a quiet day in the streets.

On a quest for my laundromat, I walked around Cordoba seeing some of the same buildings I've walked past many times in the last month and but also walking down a few streets I had never strolled down since I arrived.

Pretty sweet high school, if you ask me.

Which reminds me, over the last month I've walked, biked, or ran over 65 miles.

These shoes are made for walking.

 And after a month in Argentina, what have I learned? Well, I've learned that I still have a lot to learn-- about the Spanish language, about traveling, about life. Well, that and don't feed a stray dog or they will follow you all the way home. So let the experience continue!

Tomorrow I take a bus (assuming the strike is over, that is) to Mendoza for a few days before heading 2 hours south of Mendoza to start my work on the farm in San Rafael on April 16th.


Au revoir, Cordoba! (Oops, wrong language!)

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!!

This week's weather: humid and rainy on-and-off week.
Recent reads: Exodus. Seriously, Israel, get it together.

Yesterday I had a chance to attend a futbol match in Cordoba!

Public service billboard on the street

Now let me just say that prior to coming to South America, I knew very little about futbol as I have never played the game and don't understand the positions and the strategy of each. Futbol matches are on 10 different TV channels at any given time of day here, but I am pretty much silent as I have absolutely nothing to contribute on this subject. On Saturday night the NCAA basketball semi-final games were on and I was all about it! (I was not heart-broken by Wisconsin's loss.) Everyone here was surprised by how knowledgeable I was about basketball based on my commentary during the games because due to my total ignorance about futbol, they assumed I knew absolutely nothing about all sports in general.

But, of course, here in South America and pretty much anywhere around the world (except the US), futbol is the only sport. One Argentino friend said that for poor kids all over the world, futbol is to them what hip-hop is to kids in the ghetto: a way out. Argentinos are no exception. For them, futbol is life.

Poster in the hostel in Buenos Aires

And if futbol is life, then Diego Maradona is king of Argentina. I can't describe to you the horror on my Argentino friend's face when he mentioned Diego Maradona and I ignorantly said, "who?" Diego Maradona led the Argentina futbol team to a World Cup victory in 1986 and has been a god ever since. More notable than the finals match vs Germany is the quarter finals match vs. England. Maradona single-handedly (pun intended) defeated the English 2-1 by scoring both goals. One of these goals is forever deemed "la mano de Dios" or "the hand of God" where Maradona obviously illegally used his hand but it was not called. This continues to be a tangible point of contention to this day between Argentinos and the English. Well, that and the battle over the Falkland Islands, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK2z5-cceP4

Now this little anecdote does not mean I have instantly become an expert in futbol. But attending a match was a step in the right direction.

Even just purchasing the tickets was a task. Fellow Packer fans can relate to this but even for a Belgrano match here in Cordoba, you must be a member to buy tickets and each member can only buy two tickets per match. We got our hands on a club member's ID and I went to the stadium on Friday to purchase the sacred tickets for me and a coworker at the hostel. Considering the hoops we already had gone through to just get this far, I was praying that I didn't get robbed on the walk home, but if I did, I probably would have offered my wallet but leave me the futbol tickets!

This was a prime match to attend because the opposing team, River Plate, is ranked pretty highly in the league so it was sure to be well-attended. So much so that the local stadium just wouldn't do for this match and we bused it 40 minutes outside of town to the bigger, badder stadium.








We there a couple of hours early and got to watch the stadium slowly fill up and anticipation grow as game time approached. 

                        Let's get this started!

New this year, fans of the away team cannot purchase tickets due to too many fights between opposing fans. There go my chances of witnessing a futbol brawl! Simply observing debates among Belgrano fans about whether to sit down or stand up and the expletives that followed after a bad call lead me to believe that denying opposing fans to attend the matches, isn't such a bad ideal. 

Popular section with banners and the band.

       

Club Atletico Belgrano (CAB), Cordoba--CAB is CBA!

I loved the Belgrano team spirit! Team flags were very common and the band from the popular section led crowd chants which added to the experience.

                                      Note in the second part what I like to call the "Argentinian dead fish fist pump."

Despite the odds being against Belgrano, the local team, as they were trailing the opposing River Plate by 5+ points in the overall league standings, Belgrano came away with a 2-1 victory late in the game!

                                                                              Almost a goal by River Plate

The second goal is debatable, and whether it crossed the goal line or not will undoubtedly be reviewed on ESPN here for the next week but the fans loved it and the win still stands. 

http://espndeportes.espn.go.com/videohub/video/clipDeportes?id=deportes:2060757

The fans called it a goal for sure!

All in all, an awesome cultural experience and a great way to freshen up on my "tu madre" insults!