Day 16, The Next Step

(Sunday, the 24th of January, 2016)
Good morning my last day in General Alvear and the Mendoza province. The day greeted me with rain from the storm last night that lasted well into the morning. The time here moves so slowly, but also fast at the same time. After a late breakfast, one hour or so of mate and some more tips for Nick, then it's lunch time. And everyone knows what happens after lunch time, siesta. Before I know it, it's 4:30 and I have to get my stuff packed.

(An unrelated picture of a cactus-type plant)

We stopped in town for a little but of pre-dinner, because I am apparently getting food on the bus. The thing is, the kitchen of the restaurant doesn't open until later because the Argentinians eat dinner so late. The most we can get is grilled cheese, so after that enthralling dinner, we head to the bus station to wait for the bus. The bus is rated "semi-cama" meaning semi-bed or half-bed, I'm also supposed to get almost airline type of service, so I'm hoping that dinner is good.

Mistake. This is one of those dinners that I might regret the next morning. The meal was, a mini ham and cheese sandwich, cold cubes of potato and carrot (a salad I guess?), spinach cannelloni and a mini carrot muffin. Now, some of those things sound like they would be nice on their own, but the main course, the cannelloni was quite terrible. Piping hot noodle exterior filled with barely defrosted spinach and tomato sauce, the potato and carrot salad was a mess as well. Not great, and I'm not really sad that I didn't manage to get a picture of that dinner.

Let's see how the night goes on, I'll be waking up in the big city, if I'm even able to sleep at all.

See all of my photos here!

"(U)nity" is back at it again with their piece "D'Axel's Dream".

Day 15, I Can't Think of a One Word Title for This Post

(Saturday, the 23rd of January, 2016)
We had a lovely day today, with lots of mate and lots of funny stories. My Uncle always had the best stories from his time living in Trail B.C., hearing these stories almost guarantees a great day. We had a great light lunch of pizza and salad in General Alvear and a light dinner of Alfredo pasta. It's actually quite refreshing to eat light since I've been eating lots of heavy "asado" meat for the past few days. The night closed out with another big storm and some power outages. All in all, a relaxing and exciting day at the same time.

(This drove by while we were having lunch)

A bit of administrative details through, I moved some pictures over to the laptop intending to post them to Mega.nz, although I forgot and the laptop is gone to Chile with my Grandpa. I also may have deleted the photos from my phone already, so there may be some lost photos that I'll post in about a month. Sorry about that, I know some people are following my pictures, I'll just have to make it up to you with some more pictures of Buenos Aires.

See all of my pictures here!

Back to Latin music, today it's "Fajardo, Junior y Sus Estrellas" preforming "La Botija".

Day 14, Thoughts

(Friday, the 22nd of January, 2016)
Today marks two weeks out of Canada. I've spent one week in Chile and the other in Argentina so far. I do plan on spending a lot more time in Argentina than I originally thought, but Chile will have its time later. I'm also planning on spending a week in Uruguay, specifically Montevideo, so I'll have to add that country to my list as well. It does seem like I might have to change the name of this blog! We will see though, I am enjoying both countries immensely, the people in Chile have been friendlier, but the food and drink here in Argentina has been amazing. Although, there is still tons of time to change those perceptions. Today I finalized that decision of going to Buenos Aires and I bought a ticket for an overnight trip on Sunday into Monday morning. So things are coming together, I still have a few days to enjoy the country life.

See all of my photos here!

Today's musical feature is a little different, still from the Congahead YouTube channel but it's African instead of Latin. "Africa Forestdance" preforms "Tutu".

Day 13, Birthday

(Thursday, the 21st of January, 2016)
Today started off like most other days here, peacefully and slowly. We took a few trips to General Alvear today, once to buy a window air conditioning unit because the days and nights have been getting hotter and they had no A/C before. After spending some time installing that, we turned it on to cool the home while we went back out to that winery where we bought the tanks, this time we went to pick up an industrial grape crusher. This thing is heavy made of wood and iron and built to crush a lot of grapes at once, quite exciting.

Later that day at around 8:30 PM, we headed out again to a restaurant named Bamboo to celebrate my uncle's birthday. We listened to some great jokes and stories about my Grandpa's time in the Chilean army, and I got some great do's and don'ts for when I'm in Buenos Aires. I'm super excited to be heading out there.

See all of the photos I've taken so far here!

Today's music selection is preformed by "Bio Ritmo" and is entitled "Muralla".

Day 12, Migration

(Wednesday, the 20th of January, 2016)
Nothing notable happened today, it was one of the most relaxing and satisfying days yet. I've begun migrating things off of my laptop and onto my phone and tablet, because I think I'm going to be sending my laptop back to Chile with my Grandpa when he heads back. I'd rather not carry my giant laptop through the rest of Argentina and Uruguay. I'm not even sure that old this g will survive the trip. Anyways, that means that once the laptop is gone I'll be posting from the Blogger app on my tablet. So posts might look a little different and postings may be slower, if it doesn't look like it changed, then the Blogger app does a good job.

See all of my pictures here!

Today's musical feature is "Alex Alvear & Mango Blue" playing "Mango".

Day 11, Exchange Pt. II

(Tuesday, the 19th of January, 2016)
We woke rather early today, (although not as early as Day 7) to head to a major town about 1 km away. The main purpose of this trip was to exchange money, because we spent all of our cash buying the tanks yesterday. We were initially headed for a "casa de cambio" a currency exchange business, but after we saw the expected exchange rate in the window, my uncle called some guy and he would offer us a better rate. I thought we were headed for another casa de cambio but instead we found ourselves in a cafe a few blocks down the road. A few minutes later after ordering some coffees and pastries, some guy walks up to the window of the cafe from the street and gestures to my uncle. So he heads out and they are exchanging wads of cash on the street. He then comes back in and starts passing me wads of cash, it doesn't really help that thanks to the inflation, their biggest bill, the 100 peso bill is only worth about 10$ CAD.

It seems like the cafe was trying to get rid of a commercial juice press. This caught the eye of my uncle, so he ends up buying the machine off of the cafe and we load it into the back of the van. Back at home we had a super lunch (I've been slacking on my food blogger pictures) followed by a siesta, then a quick dip in the nearby river to cool off. We then had a lazy dinner and finished that off with some yerba mate.

Yerba mate is this leaf mixture that you add water too, similar to tea. You add 85-95 °C water to (traditionally) a hollowed, dried out gourd, or other cup filled 3/4 of the way with the mate leaf. You then drink the infusion out of a metal straw. It's a very social drink here in Argentina and Uruguay, people will pass the mate around and talk for hours. It's so prominent, that you can buy specially made bags that have three pouches, one for a thermos (of hot water) one for the mate gourd and one for the yerba mate leaf itself. But anyways, that's besides the point, I just thought it was interesting, it tastes quite good too.

We believed we were done for the night but the sky was threatening a storm, and everyone here says that I have to see an Argentinean storm, cause they are a lot stronger than the Ontarian equivalent. Even though the storm passed us by, I definitely could tell that it was massive, lightening was always flashing somewhere in the sky that there was like 45 minutes of constant light somewhere in the sky, which was amazing. After that though, we were all tired and we finally called it quits on the day.

See all of my pictures here!

Today's  musical feature is  "Eric Kurimpski" and the piece is titled "New York Titan".

Day 10, Wine?

(Monday, the 18th of January, 2016)

It seems like mu uncle has been doing a lot of thinking about making his own spirits and stuff from the local fruit. So this morning after breakfast, we went to a nearby winery about 20 minutes away and bought three 500 L. tanks and one 1'000 L. tank, with heating coils covers and some 10 L. and 20 L. glass jugs. The idea of doing this seems a lot more real now, if he can get grapes for cheap and the fruit for essentially free, why not? We spend a good portion of the day ferrying the tanks from this winery back to his house. We topped off the afternoon with another few ¼ kilos of ice cream. That was the essence of the whole day, lunch and dinner were good but small because we've all been snacking on the peaches that we acquired yesterday. I did finally go around and get proper pictures of most of the buildings on the property, so I'll post those.

All my photos here!

Musical feature of the post is "Bareto" performing "Matagalan"!