I missed out on going to Mendoza when I was in Argentina back in November and December, so it was an easy decision to jump on a bus there out of Santiago de Chile - it's only a six or seven hour bus ride (and a very scenic one at that). Mendoza is the primary wine growing region in Argentina and has lots of other (mainly outdoorsy) stuff to do as well. I was in town for five days in total and still don't feel like I gave the city justice - on a few of the days I went on excursions out of town and the remainder of the time I was mainly up at night getting stuck into some of the local wines and eating like a king (on a minor duke's budget).




One of the highlights was going white water rafting (well more of a muddy brown really) down the Mendoza river. It was great fun, if not tiring and cold. I think we got a really bad day for it, it was cold and overcast - and I was expecting Mendoza to be "scorching hot" based on reports from people I've met along the way. It could have been a lot more hairy - there was a massive storm in Mendoza that afternoon that caused every single drain in the city to overflow - just crossing the street involved wading through water half way up your shins.


I also went on a winery tour organised by the hostel - the tour was OK but not great but the wineries themselves were pretty good. Wine in Argentina, for the quality, is ridiculously cheap. I picked up a bottle of '95 cab-sav for what you'd pay for a "nice" one that was maybe two years old at home. It only occurred to me after a few days that it might be a bit difficult to get the bottle home given that you can't take bottles/fluids onto planes any more for (cough, cough) security reasons.

I'm still quite pissed off about this incident - I was getting heaps of use out of the camera (I got it while I was in Japan back in May) and learning quite a bit in the process, but I guess at the end of the day there's not much I can do about it, other than "get on with it" and make an insurance claim when I get home in February. If I was superstitious, I'd think that this was bad-luck incident #2 and would wonder what #3 will be....

I've been thinking also that perhaps this happened not because I was too trusting, but too cautious. If I'd stopped for just an extra ten seconds when I heard the first noise rather than assuming I was going to get robbed, I would probably have realised that I'd dropped my camera, and Señora Skanky wouldn't have taken off with it. I guess also she'll have a bit of trouble selling a "only sold in Japan" camera in Argentina - it doesn't have an español option.

My crash course in Spanish is progressing quite nicely despite having a few moments where I've found myself descending into spiralling sense of confusion over things like pronoun substitution. It's been good though to have something concrete to focus on and keep my mind active. My teacher (or should that be profesora) is the perfect mix of pushy (in a nice way) and supportive, so I am reasonably happy with what I've learnt so far. Yesterday, I managed to buy ferry tickets to Uruguay in mostly Spanish, until the saleswoman switched into English after she heard me mutter something to myself about the time.

I tried to go and see a football (i.e. soccer) match last Sunday with some people I met at my hostel. It started out as a rather nice Sunday afternoon walk from our hostel, through the San Telmo district (they have a street market on Sundays) and then down to La Boca where the stadium is. There was some confusion regarding the starting time so although we heard the crowd, whom I should add get very into the game - bongo drums, flags, whistles and so on; we weren't able to get a ticket much less get inside. We hung around for a while but as we were going to leave a group of guys ran at us and tried to mug us. The other guy, Chris, got punched in the back of the neck a few times; but I had three or so guys flash a revolver at me (I don't know if it was real or not) and demand my bag. By demand I mean they rather forcefully tried to remove it, but I had the clips across the front done up and they didn't realise this and thought that I was trying to resist them when in fact I was trying to undo the clips. Chris & Kara didn't know this either so they were yelling things like "just give him the freaking bag" etc. Anyway, by this time there were a lot of people around so despite me being knocked to the ground, they didn't get my bag and then ran away, although in the kerfuffle I did loose my watch but was otherwise unscathed.

I've settled into Buenos Aires quite nicely despite feeling like shite when I got here after the 11 or so hour flight from New York.  The whole flight process was a massive fiasco, I arrived more-or-less on time at the airport and it took half an hour to get to the front of the queue to check in.  I then had to re-queue at the counter at the gate because I was too late to be allocated a set and the flight had been overbooked.  AA (not the drunks) had to find a "volunteer" to give up their seat so I could fly.  I made it onto the plane, eventually, but as the last person and only after everyone else had boarded.  I got quite pissed off because the staff make out like it was my fault that the plane was overbooked and that I should somehow be grateful for getting on the plane. 

Anyway, enough with my venting! I am enjoying being here in BA despite the flight messing with my sinuses as long flights are prone to do.  I'm back in the southern hemisphere for the first time since leaving home so the weather is starting to get warmer and it has begun to dawn on me that I'm going to be home in a rather short time.  I'm extremely unprepared for this part of the trip - all I know so far is I have to be in Santiago for the start of February to fly home; so as well as explore BA I've been reading quite a bit and working out what places I want to go and so on.

Today I started Spanish lessons - so far so good.  I (as usual) left it to the last minute to organise so going to formal classes and doing a home stay on the side became to difficult and expensive at such short notice.  I'm thinking though that "plan B" might work out better, as I am doing one-on-one conversation classes with an Argentinian lady in a cafe not far from where I'm staying - and she has already started giving me homework!!

EDIT: ...which includes using buenas tardes and not buenos tardes!  ¡Soy confuso! :-)