mendoza

Ok, so I possibly could have gone to the wrong country to volunteer. Because I really like Argentina. Yes I know that being on vacation for 3 days in one small city is not how to make a good judgment of an entire country but at least take it as a good indication that I really enjoyed my trip to Mendoza!

We caught a bus 10.30pm Thursday night, spent an hour an a half on the border going through customs outside in the freezing cold at 3am (not cool) and arrived in Mendoza around 7am. We spent the day walking around the giant Parque San Martín, then made our way towards Cerro de la Gloria which has a stunning monument to San Martín at the top. Along the way we picked up a wandering Australian who must have heard us speaking English so he joined us for the summit & then a beer at the bottom. Later that night we met up with the others who had driven over by car to enjoy a dinner together.

Me, Marco, Bushra, Mia & Pernille (Team Bus)

Thanks for taking our photo Australian friend! At the top of Cerro de la Gloria

Entrance to Parque San Martín

The park is so large that the helado (ice cream) vendors get around by motorbike instead of walking!

 The next day we all caught a bus to Maipú about 40 minutes out of Mendoza, hired some bikes, grabbed a map then started off on our wine trail. Beautiful weather, great company, & of course lots of fabulous wine (and a shot of absinthe) made a memorable day. We finished up in a beer garden that looked like we had stumbled into someones back yard by accident and made me feel like I was right back home in NZ.

The next day I was hoping to check out some of the local markets but apparently everything in Mendoza shuts down on a Sunday, so we spent the day meandering around the city exploring.

Plaza Independcia

Plaza Italia

Huge fan of all the tree lined streets in Mendoza

Eventually we met back up with some of the others, enjoyed a final dinner then jumped back on the bus to Santiago to repeat the same torturous 3am border crossing. How it works is everyone exits the bus to get their passports stamped etc. then you go to this room and stand behind a table with your luggage to wait. To pass the time you get to check out a homemade poster board with pictures of drug mules in their underwear caught with drugs strapped to them. Nice deterrent technique! After the customs officers finish they come around shaking a plastic cup for tips. Government officials getting tipped? Like if I don't give you money you might search my bag a little more? Thanks for making me stand here for half an hour? This is odd to me.

So how do I compare Mendoza to Santiago?

1.) COFFEEEEE!!! Real expresso coffee is widely available, not just the instant Nescafe that is worshiped everywhere in Santiago.

2) I experienced multiple thunderbolt moments of 'Wait, I can actually understand what you're saying to me?!? Amazing!' The Spanish is so much easier to understand.

3) I think Mendoza is much more used to having extranjeras because they don't make you feel like you stick out like a sore thumb by staring you down or cat calling you for wearing shorts in 30 degree weather!

4) Everything is way less expensive in Mendoza than in Santiago.

5) Above mentioned tree-lined streets.


So back in Santiago and time is flying by much too fast as usual, as already a week has passed since I got back.

mentiroso

I made it onto Chilean TV! haha. Don't get excited I'm not speaking Spanish or anything. A report on mentirosos (liars) I'm on in the last 5 minutes, funnnnyyy


http://www.meganoticias.cl/2010/visualizador_reportajes.php


I'm so excited because I'm going to Mendoza tonight for the weekend, a mandatory trip to renew the 90 day visa, can't wait!

taller de arte

Well today was interesting. I want to write about a typical day at Aldea but to be honest they don't really exist. You can experience a whole range of things all in one day. One minute you can be thinking how well everything is going and then the next minute two girls are chasing each other with the cups of water you were using for the painting taller and a water fight has errupted.
Or today for example, we had a taller de arte on the negative impacts of smoking. A lot of the girls at Aldea smoke, and they are allowed to do so in the hogar and ask the Tia's (who all also smoke) for a light if they need it. I do have to say they are kind enough to offer us a politely declined cigarette on occasion. So Stephen brought in some information and statistics for the girls then they drew posters. The girls actually seemed as if they were really into it and did some great work. We finished up, and it only took a whole 5 minutes before three girls got bored and decided to use the pastels we had been using, to start drawing a certain part of the male anatomy on the windows of our Sala de Arte. Yep. One girl stole a pastel then ran outside and continued defacing the walls & windows, so every time we had scrubbed off one 'picture' there was another one waiting for us. Sometimes all you can do is laugh, and today all I could think was how absurd the whole situation was if you were looking from the outside in. Although when I was getting bark thrown at the back of my head as we left the Sala de Arte by the particular girl responsible for the 'drawings', who was now mad because she was told she couldn't play with us for the rest of the day (a whole half hour), because of her bad behaviour I'm not sure if I was laughing. But of course you can't take life too seriously, which I was reminded of again when I saw another girl who had just enthusiastically participated in our taller lighting up a cigarette outside her hogar.
And tomorrow is a new day :)

halloween

So I wasn't expecting to celebrate Halloween this year seeing as I'm not on a ship containing 1500 American passengers wanting to participate in costume competitions and parades down the Promenade deck (how did you enjoy that this year ship friends?) but as luck would have it the majority of people who work at VE are from the United States so a Chilean Halloween fiesta was in order. I partook in the celebration dressed as a botella de coca cola. Proving how good of a night it was, I had to get new keys cut today for my apartment because I managed to loose both them and my cellphone in the club we went to that night. Not entirely sure how that happened but I'm lucky because some nice person picked up my phone and I'm getting them back Thursday hoorah!

Baby spice, The world cup, Cancer, Bottle of coke and Wheres Wally.