San Rafael

Tamara, in her infinite wisdom, planned an excursion for a bunch of students from school for the weekend. San Rafael is a city about 3 hours away from Mendoza, but when I say "city" I use the word quite liberally. Really, what it is, is a little outpost with a gas station, a super market, and a few shops somewhere between Mendoza and Buenos Aires. The drive out to San Rafael was the first time I saw completely untouched countryside. Now I've been through the prairies of the midwest in Canada and the states, and seen what seemed like untouched land, but this was a totally different experience. The countryside here is really nothing but countryside. I didn't see a single electric line or road sign, or ANYTHING for almost the entire 3 hours of driving. It was just tumbleweed, some wild grasses, and a scraggly little tree here or there. The road itself was the only sign that human beings existed, but even it had a maximum of three cars on it.

We arrived in San Rafael and ran around running some errands (we bought food) before driving to our cabina on a lake about a hour farther away. It turned out the cabina was more like a private house, and between the five of us, the food and the house cost less than living in Mendoza for two nights. Schweeet.

Saturday night we had (of course) an asado once again. Every house on the lake had as very fancy, souped-up parrilla, because the grilling culture here is so advanced it would be a faux pas to offer up a house for rent without one. Tamara proved to be quite the cook, soaking the meat in a fancy marinade before putting it on the grill. Wow, was it yummy.

I, on the other hand, couldn't get over the beauty of the lake we were perched above. The water was a crazy shade of green, and nestled between huge mountains of rock and weeds. I actually thought at first that it was a quarry because of all the rock everywhere, but here, the mountains are just much dryer than in New York. In a lot of ways, they're like the mountains of Arizona - just less dusty. Check out the view.

Dancing under the Stars

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. Friday night was SOOOO fun. My professor at school let it slip that her brother is a tango dancer, so after class I approached him with my broken spanish to ask him about it. Matias was entirely humble, and totally downplayed his dancing abilities, but told me he was going out Friday night to an outdoor tango event, and invited me along. At 10:30 we met for dinner and drinks with his first dance professor who, I found out later, he started taking lessons from over 10 years ago. Suddenly I was conscious of the fact that I was going dancing with a very serious tanguero. Over 10 years of dance lessons?! What the hell was I in for?

The dancing started around 11:30 at night. It was in one of the bazillion little Plaza's here in Mendoza. It really wasn't much in terms of music - just a boom box and some CDs - but it was special because it was so impromtu and small-town. Everyone knew each other - I even knew half of them from Wednesday night - and no one was really in charge. People had brought CDs from home, and were just playing whatever they felt like. The weather was perfect - just a warm breeze and a clear-as-crystal sky, and I got a 4 hour private lesson from an absolutely incredible tango dancer. Whoo hooooooooooo! It was SOO fun. I told Matias that I suddenly understood the need to close your eyes, listen to the music, and just follow. I don't think I could actually teach any step to someone at all, but I can say quite surely now, that I can dance a little tango. Granted, I had the advantage of dancing with the father of all leaders, and have no idea if I'd be able to follow anyone else, but whooo hooo anyway. Matias's teacher told me I will win money dancing tango one day. I dunno if that's true, but they were both impressed. That made me happy. I think I'm in love with Tango.

Dancing was followed by an ice cream (at the heladeria Matias swears is the best one in town) and a walk through one of the larger plazas. Mendoza is proving to be quite the romantic city. So many stars, perfect warm night breezes, summer scents, and little park benches with couples snuggling everywhere. It feels like a movie sometimes. And there's always a little bit of tango music somewhere off in the distance, with a couple dancing that sad dance in the moonlight. Mommy and Daddy - I've found the city you should retire to. It's quiet, tranquil, and beautiful without loosing sight of what it is to be a city. I think it's probably got a population 10 times that of Princeton, and even though the square footage of the city is also about that much bigger, the peace and tempo match Princeton. Only there's wine and it's much warmer. What more could you want?

Wine Tour

Thursday Linea and I went on the bodega tour finally. Although it still rained in the morning, the afternoon was pretty nice. Unfortunately, all of us - me, Linea, Tamara, Tais... - were quite sick - who knows why, but puking is no fun - so tasting wines was a little daunting for the two of us. We managed though. Of course.

We went to two different wineries. One was super huge and industrial and I couldn't believe the size of the tanks they aged the wine in. They were totally about the business and seemed to have little reverence for the wine making process at all. The other bodega was wildly different. This bodega produces wine that is sold exclusively at the vineyard and in Kentucky (yeah, go figure). The bottles here went for something between 10 and 30 pesos, while in Kentucky, the cheapest bottle is closer to $60. If I wasn't limited to a backpack I can actually carry, I would have bought 15 bottles. The wine was incredible. They also have this bazillion year old tradition for how they ferment their wine, and use a process that was used to prepare the wine for the founder's daughter's wedding more than 100 years ago.

Following the vineyards, we went to an Olive bodega. Here they grow both table olives and olives for olive oil. Wow. I can't say yum enough times. We got to taste all these different kinds of olives, oils, pastes, and whatever else they had. Gosh, I was in heaven. Again, I would have bought the store had it not been for my weight limitations.

The ride home on the bus was another cultural experience. Since time is not an issue, we drove each and every person on the bus home to their house. It took over an hour and a half, but we got door-to-door service. I was quite impressed. I've never heard of that happening in the States.

Beauty Treatment

Wednesday was supposed to be the day that we went on the wine tour, but the rain here has been unstoppable. All the locals are going crazy. Since Mendoza is usually a super dry place, and experiences only 18 days of rain or something, the fact that there's been almost 6 in a row by this point is making the locals restless. Nevertheless... the wine tour was pushed back to Thursday, and Linea and I decided to go get our nails done instead.

I think as far as beauty salons go, this was one of the high-end ones in Mendoza, but I will say that they were quite a "developing world" experience nonetheless. I don't know what it is about Americans, but time is money to us... especially in New York. As a result, even the beauty salons have their processes streamlined and practiced so that the least amount of time is wasted. This place, however, was not set up for efficiency at all. In order to get my feet done, I sat in a chair with one of those foot soakers on the floor in front of me for 10 minutes or so. Then I had to move to a massage table where they did the buffing of my toes and calluses and stuff. Then I had to move again to another chair that was kind of like a dentist chair while the lady doing my toes walked around the room (about the size of a typical dining room in the States) and grabbed nail polish remover from one corner, cotton from the other, cream from another, and whatnot. The impressive thing is that she didn't just bring them all over to where my feet were, but got up constantly, every time she needed to get something new. The entire process of getting my nails done took over 2 hours. I fell asleep.

It was nice to be pretty again, though.

First Tango Lesson

Although I didn't think I was going to tango in Mendoza at all, Wednesday night the entire school went out the one and only milonga in the city, Cafe Soul, and I finally got my first tango lesson. The teacher only spoke spanish, and was a little difficult to hear (let alone understand) but it was wildly fun nonetheless. Practically all the students from the school were there and we did a lot of walking around the room in a tango hold, and practicing moving our feet the proper way. Tilke, if you need a solution to all your tango dancing problems, the key is to keep your needs together at all times. Every time I screwed up, it was because my knees weren't together.

We spent the night dancing away. I liked it SO much better than the Milonga I went to in Buenos Aires because the pressure was not there at all, and it was totally acceptable to be a beginner dancer. No one got mad at you, and (I'm sure) the level of dancing was probably a lot lower than the Buenos Aires houses are.

I was struck, once again, with the sad beauty of the dance. Sometimes I feel like the dancers are crying. Because it's quite hard to follow if you see anything, many of the women dance with their eyes closed, which only contributes to the feeling of loss and melancholy the dance emotes. Later in the night, the teachers of the dance class would dance around the room and I couldn't peel my eyes away from them. They weren't doing all the flashy show moves that the dancers in the street do for the tourists, but just dancing tango like they were the only ones in the room. It was beautiful and sad, and entirely nostalgic. One day I'll dance like that too.

Return to Bs As

I've finally returned to Bs As and will be posting all my blog entries from the last two weeks.  I've kept each entry separate, as I wrote them.  Thanks for your patience!!

Absenteeism

I appologize for the extended absenteeism. I have no personal internet access here in Mendoza, so uploading my blog entries has been a little difficult. I promise that when I return to Buenos Aires this weekend I will post away like crazy, and you´ll have lots to read. SO much amazing stuff has happened here. I think I´m in love with Argentina.