This is the Last Stop

I arrived in Mendoza today, the land of sun and wine. Well, there isn´t much sun, nor have I seen too much wine, but the vineyards are all outside of the city -- obviously -- and I think the weather should clear up mañana. Having said that, I´m really impressed with Mendoza.

I already told RJ, my hostel is like the Real World house of hostels ... it´s awesome, clean, pretty funky and cool looking, with a back terrace with a grill and kitchen, pool, foosball, ping pong, DirectTV. It has an adjoining bar, the Publick House, that looks really cool. It has everything. And it costs me half of what the place in San Martín did, where all I had was a tiny, wooden room. My elbows scraped the walls when I tried to do push-ups. Tiny. Also, I did the math today, lodging and travel over the 8 day trip will come out to just about 200 bucks U.S. total. Not bad at all!

The trip from San Martín was more or less hellacious, because the bus arrived an hour and a half late, complicating things because I had a connecting bus in Nequen that had to wait for me. The worst part of this was that I had a chocolate treat after lunch, expecting to eat between busses. Not so. I did get another alfajor on the bus. And then another one, because they wanted to apologize for the delay. Breakfast on the bus today? Alfajor. Within 18 hours the only possible nutritional sources I had were chocolate bars. Combine my low blood sugar levels and a crappy bus, and you can imagine how I felt. Luckily, I had a gigantic steak sandwich when I got in that was out of this world. Just a huge ass loaf of bread with fried egg, steak, ´Golf Sauce´ a.k.a. a mixture of mayo and ketchup, ham, and cheese. It was delicious.

In San Martín I had buffalo bresealoa and ciervo a la cazadora -- Deer: hunter style. Both were great. Tonights gastronomical treats will be the Chimay Tripel I just bought and grape leaves and shawarma from the Lonely Planet recommended Mediterranian place that is within viewing distance of the hostel. Ciao!