From Bmore to BA

This has been quite a week. I´ve been hanging out primarily with a group of Irish guys and an Aussie, so suffice it say the debauchery has been in full effect. My poor aching body…Anyway, I´m heading out of Mendoza tonight, with the eventual destination of Montevideo - the capital of Uruguay. The tentative travel plan is this: 14 hour bus to Buenos Aires, 1 hour high-speed boat to Colonia, Uruguay (which is just across the river from Buenos Aires), followed by a 3 hour bus ride to Montevideo. I´m pretty excited to make it out there because aside from the fact that Montevideo is supposedly a nice, chill city, it is right by the beach, boyyyy! Officially, I need to pop over to Uruguay to renew my tourist visa for Argentina for another 3 months, but I envision this trip being more pleasure than business.

So here´s the gamplan: get to Uruguay, renew my visa, spend a few days there, make it back to Buenos Aires in time to catch the Ravens play the Steelers, then take off for Córdoba and finally settle down and try to find some damn work!

My second day in Mendoza (Tuesday) I switched hostels. When your living on a budget from one dive to the next, any minimal level of luxury starts to make you feel uncomfortable…so I had to get back into the game and go to a more ¨budget oriented¨ place. No, seriously, it was nice to be at the first place for a night and actually be able to take a shower where the hotwater doesn´t stop after 2 minutes - and where they have this exotic substance known as ¨soap¨- but it was just plain boring because their were no young people or Argentines around.

So I went to this other hostel on Tuesday, and then the real fun began. 5 minutes after I get there I sign up for ¨parapente¨ (paragliding). The funniest part of this whole excursion - where you basically run off a cliff with a parachute strapped to you back - was that the paragliding part actually turned out to be by far the safest activity of the day. The near head-on collision on our way up to the foot of the mountain provided the first taste of danger…while the ride up the mountain - on a 4×4 vehicle the size of a jeep, stocked with 10 people and as many parachutes - was made even more dramatic considering the ¨path¨ for the vehicle was nothing more than a gravelly footpath, maybe 6 feet wide, carved directly into the side of the mountain. Guardrails? Ha, laughable, man. The sheer drop off the side made for a pretty dramatic ride up (especially when the jeep stalled out and started drifting backwards). It´s funny the whole time the Irish guys and I actually agreed that the ride down in the parachute would very likely prove much less scary. I have pitcures of all of this, but unfortunately I don´t have my link so I won´t be able to post them until I get back to Buenos Aires.

So my instructor and I, Nito, finally jump off the mountain after the wind catches the parachute. We go hurtling up about 100 feet in 5 seconds - it was really a thrill. There are beautiful views all around of Mendoza and the valley…so we´re floating around, taking it all in. And then, surprise surprise, something comes up - I start getting that feeling in my stomache that usually occurs while your plane is rocketing through a thunderstorm. I´m about to lose my lunch, that is. I inform my instructor of this and he immediately hands me a plastic bag, although it´s a bit difficult to spread out the bag when you´re moving 50 miles an hour through the wind. The bag winds up sitting over my face like a film of saran wrap. Anyway, it turns out not to be too bad (and nobody´s clothes are ruined), so after a little while we go to swoop down for a landing. It´s really amazing how well these guys can control the parachute - we landed exactly where they intended, a mile or so away off the launching site at the base camp.

In other news, I´m considering selling my consulting services as matchmaker/love translator. Two nights ago I coached one of my Irish friends through a night at the club, with the end result of him returning back to the hostal sometime around breakfast the following day. Previously, his approach with women consisted of going up to a girl and reading from a phrasebook right in front of her. In fact, the whole group of Irish guys had me write down a quick cheat sheet of critical phrases (i.e. ¨sus ojos son mas bonitas en todo el mundo¨ - I learned that one in Spain, look it up) before they took off yesterday for northern Argentina. They really were a great bunch of guys. However, I regret to inform you that despite their best efforts to persuade me that the old Irish stereotypes really were just stereotypes, when they arrived at the hostel their first night with a dozen or so beers, their arguments lost a bit of steam. I feel like the past week has been one big running joke: So a Jew, an Aussie, and 4 Irish guys go to a bar…

Anyway, in terms of my own love life, there´s nothing much to note. But, I did have a ¨date¨ last night with a nice Mendocina I met a few days ago. Basically we just BS´d for a few hours, but it was a great way to practice my spanish and I´m seriously getting leaps and bounds better than I´ve ever been.

That´s all for now…gonna head out and enjoy the weather. Since I´ve left Buenos Aires it´s been cloudy for one day…Let´s hope it continues.

Ciao,

Adam

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.