Besides planning more adventures we’ve been spending quite a bit of time organizing and further developing our business, with the hope that it will enable us to have even more flexability. Although, the Summer hasn’t been all work and no play. We’ve been putting in our fair share of time in the sun…

A heated game of flip cup

Catching some Z's

Admiring the view

My very own corona commerical

Hot tub time

Pop quiz hot shot! What’s worse? A Dresden haircut? Or a Romanian tattoo?

In keeping with my tradition of taking it upon myself to alter an entire countries flag, I thought I would go ahead and give Argentina a new slogan:

“Argentina; It’s amazing no one gets killed driving here!”

I think they are trying to be a “green country” and save on electricity by not installing any traffic signals. Cars will just drive down perpedicular streets, and somehow, someway one of the cars will know to stop and give way to the other. I have yet to figure it out, but until I do I’ll be clutching to my seatbelt. It’s pure pandemonium!

Which brings me to my next thought, er rather made-up-word: PanJamonIum. That’s all they eat here. Pan & Jamon (aka Bread and Ham). So I’ve coined the new word of panjamonium. Notify Webster.

They also eat Dulce De Leche on their pan. Which is quite delicious. And it’s laced with sugar which is probably why I’m still awake on this 14 hour bus ride from Mendoza to Buenous Aires. That and the fact that it’s about 38 degrees celcius here. For those of you on the Farenheit scale, just know that 38 degrees is REALLY friggin hot! How hot is it? It’s so hot that in about 6 more degrees you could turn ham into bacon. I guess you could say it’s 6 degrees of seperation between Jamon and Kevin Bacon.

Don’t forget to tip your waitress. I’ll be here all night. Sweating.

I only went in there in the first place as per a recomendation from a Couch Surfing friend Luciana. I wanted to sample their Dulce de Leche ice cream, but apparently you can’t get just one flavor. So I selected vanilla as my second choice. HOLY COW! Some of the best vanilla I have ever tasted!

So I returned the next day and ordered a mint chip and some vanilla. And again, the mint chip blew me away.

So I returned the next day and ordered a raspberry and lemon. Same results.

Before I left Mendoza, I made one last stop at the corner store for some more mint, and more delce de leche. I’ve had more ice cream here in the last 4 days then I have in the last year of my life.

So ya, if you make it to Mendoza, make sure to make a stop by Ferruccio Soppelsa for a cool down cone to see taste what I’m talking about.

Now that that is out of the way…

The other day I was wandering the streets of Mendoza to just sort of get acquainted with the lay of the land. Part of my journey lead me to Centro Cívico – Casa de Gobierno which is a government building where many city buses pass by.

As I walked past one of the bus stops, I noticed a few men placing used tires near the curb on front of the building.

I thought it was a bit odd for them to be placing tires there, but didn’t think too much of it until I saw a small fire inside one of the tires.

But even still nothing really dawned on me that anything was out of the ordinary. I did think it was a bit of a peculiar place to dispose of tires, but hey I’ve seen stranger things on this trip, so I walked on. I was sitting down on a bench at a nearby fountain when I heard this harsh crackling sound. I turned around and looked back over my shoulder towards the area whence I just left.

What had started as a small hand warming fire, had now spread across the full length of the sidewalk and the street was quickly becoming engulfed in thick black clouds of smoke!

I rushed back over to take some flicks…

…all the while trying to stay upwind from the fumes.

After about 10 minutes of ducking and dodging the swirling wall of smoke the bomberos finally showed up to put an end to the fun…

…turning the black smoke…

…white.

I was flabergasted that they didn’t want my assistance since I had just purchased a bottle of water.

After the smoke had cleared (literally) all that remained were the metal wire bands from the inside of the tires…

…and a few protesters that were responsible for the petroleum protest that were hauled off in a police car.

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people were protesting petroluem companies by burning tires, and then they get haulded off to jail in a gas powered police car rolling in 4 tires?

Yeah. Major bummer. I had been staying in what I thought was a relatively safe hostel here. There was a gate with a buzzer on it to get into the property. Everyone in the place was friendly. There were lockers. Above the reception desk were two plaques for winning ¨Safest Hostel¨in 2006 & 2007. So maybe I let my guard down a bit. Even despite hearing stories from other guests about thefts in Mendoza.

Last night I was feeling a bit drowzy at around 10:30pm so I took my laptop up to my room and watched an episode of The Office. After it ended I closed the laptop and slid it under my bed. I was in the corner bed on the bottom bunk so the laptop was the farthest from the doors that you could possibly put a laptop. And I was sleeping in the bed above it! It was a 6 person dorm, so there were 5 other people in there as well. But somehow at some point during the night a prowler snuck into the room undetected and managed to relieve me of my 15¨ Macbook Pro while I slept only inches from it. I guess I really was tired as I can normally sense humans in my personal space, even while sleeping.

After talking to other people in the hostel and the police, it turns out that 4 unscrupulous individuals (allegedly from Buenos Aires) checked into the hostel late last night and then went around pilfering rooms. At one point one of the girls asked to borrow some shampoo from a Canadian gal residing on the hostel. Being a Canadian, she naturally obliged and gave her some shampoo — at midnight. The girl then took the shampoo into the ping pong room. Note: there is no shower in the ping pong room. Then at around 3am the same girl was found IN the Canadians room. The Canadian (Sarah is her name) woke up to the same girl again asking for… shampoo! Right. Something is NOT right. These people also managed to pick 200 pesos out of the pocket of a passed out Hawaiian dude.

Anyways, long story short… I am now without a laptop and it totally sucks! I´ve been in a major funk the last few days and am now just trying to figure out how to cope without a computer. I wassoupset and depressed that I actually stooped so low as to eat at a McDonalds. Yes, it was that bad. I just wanted to see if the Mickey D´s could possibly make me feel any worse. Only slightly. Almost everything I had on the laptop is recoverable… except for ALL of the photos & videso from this trip! I guess it´s a good thing I was keeping this blog as those photos are still available. But there were some other gems that are just not replaceable. I guess I´ll always have the memories.

It´s actually pretty amazing that nothing else has happened to our laptops in the last 7 months. But we had heard all along that South America was going to be dangerous. Sure enough.

Word to the wise: Apparently knocking on wood has no effect in protecting laptops.

There must have been some small print I missed on that one.

*sigh*

Life goes on.

So taking that learning experience, I booked a 1st class seat on a bus from Mar Del Plata to Mendoza. It´s the only way to roll when you´re parking your butt in a seat for 18 hours! It´s not exactly airline first class, but it is nice. It´s like sitting in a giant lazy boy chair on wheels. The seats recline to almost horizontal so you can easily doze off. The food leaves a bit to be desired (yet more jamon e queso) but it´s tolerable.

The ride actually went be pretty quickly. I learned why the Argentinian flag has a sun on it… because the entire country is covered with sun flowers. And, once it got dark I saw the most amazing lightning storm that I´ve ever seen! So beautiful! And when I woke up, the bus was just pulling into the station at my destination. So, you get room and board, travel, and food all for the price of one ticket. Not too bad.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go practice my Spanish pickup lines.

…and wait…

…and eat while waiting…

…and wait…

…and compute while waiting…

…and wait…

…and wait to wait while waiting..

We waited for 5 hours for a delayed flight from Buenos Aires to Mar Del Plata. The plane was about the size of a torpedo, so I can´t imagine why it took so long to get here. There were about 2 dozen passengers, 1 flight attendant, and 3 cookies for us all to share as our in-flight snack.

Once we landed we took a cab to our new digs.

And I thought the hostel in Pucón was bad. That place was like the Taj Mahal! This hole in MDP was the worst hostel/hotel I’ve ever seen in my life. Straight out of a movie. Wooden panelling lobby with an overweight man behind the desk smoking like a chimeny. A homeless guy with filthy feet sleeping on the couch in the lobby. Giant 5 pound lead ingets attached to the room key to prevent you from stealing it. As if I’d ever want to come back here. Beds that were concave, a TV about to fall on the bed (maybe that explains the concaveness), dirty towels, constantly running water in the bathroom/shower, broken night stands. At least there weren’t any cockroaches! I’ll give them that!

Luckily my cousin Diana and her husband Gabe have a nice vacation apartment that they are letting us borrow for a few days. So we´ll tough it out in this non-roach infested roach motel and then live in luxury at the apartment. Thanks Gabe & Diana! You saved us!