Grape stompin’

So actually this entry has nothing to do with grape stomping. We did just return from a wine tour, though. This entry includes stuff about: the amazing lunch I ate yesterday, the cool people I’ve been meeting, the cute stuff I’ve seen, how I’ve been spending my time with Eleanor and Jared, and the neat wine tour we took today. End of short version.

Yesterday for lunch I had the most amazing, filling, and delicious meal I’ve had since I’ve been here. There is this great vegetarian buffet here called the Green Apple. I was skeptical at first, because when you try to make EVERYTHING without meat, sometime you have to get a little “creative” with the substitutes. And sometimes I can’t stomach creative. But it was so, so, so good. If I wasn’t so insistent on new experiences every day, I’d go back!

Like I said before, Mendoza is much more my speed. More so than Buenos Aires, but I’m ready to move on. I just got back from buying my bus ticket to Bariloche, in the Lake District in the mountains in southern Argentina. There should be plenty of beautiful trails to hike. I just hope I beat the snow! In the name of packing light, I only brought my trusty Chacos. However, those of you who know me well, know they’ll hold up even in snow for me, as long as it’s only a couple inches!

The hostel here is better than the last. It’s much easier to meet people and cheaper, too! I was reading in the courtyard yesterday afternoon and noticed the lawn mower. It plugs in! As in, it’s electrically powered! How funny! Speaking of reading… I’m wondering if I’m being too thorough with my guide book. I like to be really prepared… I’m very thorough (did someone say anal retentive?), and I wonder if it’s eating up too much of my time. Maybe I won’t be so insistent about reading EVERYTHING about a country before I decide where I want to go and what I want to do. But then again I have several 24 hour bus rides ahead of me. 🙂

Yesterday afternoon, while Eleanor and Jared were napping, I went to check out the “central park” of Mendoza. It’s called Parque del San Martin. It`s huge, and really pretty. It was really interesting to see the leaves of deciduous trees changing color side by side with the palm trees. I spent a lot of time reading by the lake where there were crew teams rowing. Made me kind of nostalgic! Oh! And it was so cute… this little girl walked by with her parents when I was eating a grapefruit, and she asked her parents what I was eating. But when she asked, she called me “señora,” which is only used for women who are either married or over forty. Any female who`s spent time in a spanish speaking country will understand how weird it is to be referred to as señora instead of señorita when you’re as young as I am.

When I got back to the hostel, Jared and Eleanor were watching “Along Came Polly” in the common room with some other folks. I’ve never seen it before, and it was so funny. Also, it’s about following your heart and taking risks, so it definitely had a message I could relate to. Plus it’s really great to watch it with the Spanish subtitles, because you get to learn the different expressions that are used. It’s different in other languages. Just for example, to say “I’m 22 years old” in spanish, you actually say I have 22 years. If you said it any other way, no one would understand you. So, it’s good to learn how to keep people from being entirely confused when they talk to me.

The hostel also has a ping pong table, which is fun. And it’s nice to play with someone other than my cousin who is really vicious about it. We went out and had pizza and beer for dinner. The beer here is great! Later that night, I was hanging out on the roof and I ended up meeting this woman from New Zealand who taught me how to fire dance! It was awesome! It’s where you have a ball of fire at the end of a rope and you swing them really fast and dance while you cross them around your body. I have a hard time getting my arms to go different directions and to keep the ropes from getting crossed, but I managed to learn how to turn, cross, and I learned one side of a fancy trick. I also met two other women who were my age travelling alone. They both had come from Peru and Bolivia. Both said to go as fast as I could through Chile because it’s so expensive and that I would love Bolivia because the people are so nice.

Speaking of people being nice, the woman who sold me my bus ticket was really sweet and very helpful. I’m not worried at all anymore about my mediocre spanish. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

The wine tour we went on today was really neat. We visted a very industrialized winery where absolutely everything was mechanized. It’s the biggest in Argentina, and it was really impressive. Then we went to another, smaller but much cuter place. They had a more thorough tour and did a better job of describing what you’re looking for when you’re wine tasting. The tours were in Spanish and then in a very accent-laden English. It was great, because I got to find out how much I actually understood once they said it in English. And the good news is, I got most of it! What a relief! We also drove out into the country where the dam is for the water for the vineyards. The countryside was beautiful with all the leaves changing colors at the foot of the Andes. I can’t wait to get closer! I leave for Bariloche tomorrow night!