Catch up: Mendoza

I was just in Mendoza for the last four days. Era divina! The city of Mendoza: tree engulfed streets, clean air, a siesta, wonderful parks, tranquilo gente, etc etc...Mendoza is the western most province that boarders Chile and the home to the highest peak in the world, outside the Himalayas. The Andes are amazing. And the home of the Malbec wine. Now I`ve seen teh Andes from Jujuy and from Mendoza and I plan to go to Peru, to get yet another view of this monstrous landscape.
On one day, Katherine and I rode bikes through the town of Maipu to see bodegas. I was really hungry when we started out so we went straight to the restaurant, really chi-chi, created for tourists like ourselves. I would have prefered a pit stop to eat choripan (sausage on bread for 2 pesos), but nothing was open, probably because everyone was siesta-ing...We rode our poorly fitted hybrid bikes along bumpy roads, and since Katherine is blond, and since we are girls, the common sounds of a sloppy kiss was puckered our ways multiple times. "MMMWWYA, chicas!" When we were eating at the restaurant, Almacen del Sur, that apparently grows all its own produce and makes special gourmet things, we happened upon these two women, one Canadian and the other French who were quite sloshed at the point since having been to a few bodegas before. They were laughing and making that kissing sound, and mockingly saying "chicas!" We couldn´t help but laugh with them, a relief since the ride there had been well, not so pleasurable. We shared a wonderful bottle of wine there, their cheapest best one, recommended by our sweet waiter, it was called San Felipe.
We had the best wine I had ever had in my whole 5 or so years of imbibing alcohol...The Malbec is a treat, a speciality of Mendoza. After the over priced, but deliciously fresh meal, we did make it to a bodega, where we met a really nice man, Christian, who served us an aged or "añejo" wine and a newer one. We bought a really good wine from him for 15 pesos. (Yes thats 5 American dollars. Despite the economy´s instability, Mendoza looked pretty good, a lot cleaner than Buenos Aires, a steady economy based on vino? perhaps.)
Met several characters here and there: A man named Oscar found us when we were wandering through Uspallata, a town outside of the city Mendoza, and took us on a personal tour of the Andes in his SUV. He took us to this look out of the 7 colors, litarlly a mountain that was orange, green, blue, yellow, and three others. And wehn we had our lady time: manicures, pedicures, facials, we met a Syrian woman Dibe, who wouldn´t stop giving me shit for having short fingernails. She said she worked miracles on my fingernails. She also made us bleed and had bad aim with the polish...There were the several different pairs and groups of people passing through our hostel, staying there as well. Many of them had been to Buenos Aires and hardly any of them had anything good to say about it. To my surprise, I kind of took that personally. Yet the only couple who said that they loved it was a couple from Mexico City, with whom I talked Mexican politics...They had a good saying "cuando paga, el perro baila" that is to say: when you pay, the dog dances, basically it means "money talks" which is how there government seems to work these days... Perhaps this couple was more used to the dirty, overwhelming beauty of Buenos Aires, that is a bustling, poor, metropolis, than many other travelers (mainly Western Euros and Americans) with whom we spoke are not. Buenos Aires is a lot to get used to coming from the United States. All we could tell them is that it really grows on you....and time has helped us to love this city.